


Any Four Walls

by tarysande



Series: Grace Shepard [19]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-12 18:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 43,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2119695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard and Garrus embark on their next great mission: parenting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [w0rdinista (Niamh_St_George)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niamh_St_George/gifts).



> I asked for prompts on tumblr, and w0rdinista replied with, "Shepard and Garrus adopt their first war orphan." 
> 
> For those playing the home game, this is definitely the same Shepard and Garrus I've been writing about. However, while A Handful of Dust is still a work in progress, anything that happens after is considered AU and may or may not change, depending on how that story shakes out.
> 
> A collection of interconnected short fics, to be updated as the mood strikes. (The first was previously archived in the Grace Notes collection.)

_'Home' is any four walls that enclose the right person._

~Helen Rowland

* * *

 

“Admiral Shepard,” the young woman squeaked. She’d risen halfway from her seat behind the desk before freezing like a pyjak caught in the ration bin. “I—I had no idea you’d come yourself. I just—oh. Oh, gosh. My boss is going to  _kill me._ ”

Shepard smiled the smile she usually saved for placating irritated krogan or upset Council members and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I’m happy to help. Callista, right?”

“Callie,” the girl said at once, and then blinked. “But you can call me Callista, if you want. You can call me whatever. It’s fine.”

“Callie,” Shepard amended. “Trust me, I’ve been sent on more far-flung missions than what amounts to a half-hour skycar ride and an afternoon of my time.”

Behind her, Garrus cleared his throat, and she stepped through the door so he could enter on her heels. Callie went a shade paler, and actually put her hands on the desk to bolster herself, whispering something under her breath that Shepard couldn’t make out, but the way she shook her head spoke volumes.

“Right,” Garrus added. “And at least this one has some value. Unlike a few missions I remember. What  _did_  you do with those League of One medallions, Shepard?”

She snorted. “Y’know? After all that? They were in the hold of the SR-1 when it blew.”

“Of course they were.”

While they bantered, tossing the conversational ball back and forth with practiced ease, Shepard kept one eye on Callie. Slowly, the hands unclenched and she finished rising to her feet. Trembling fingers scrubbed unseen wrinkles from her skirt and pushed imaginary flyaway hair from her brow. When Callie had composed herself, Shepard said, “Your message said you had something of a unique problem, but wasn’t particularly clear on the details.”

“Right,” Callie said, taking a deep breath and straightening her shoulders. “My message. Right. Gosh. See, it was just a shot in the dark. I didn’t even think it’d get past your secretary’s secretary, if I’m honest. It’s just… you’re—I mean—you’re kind of the, uh,  _poster couple_  for turian-human uh, long-term relationships, and I thought, um—well.”

“Poster couple,” Garrus echoed, his subharmonics telling her his horror was only half-feigned. “Please let it not be an actual poster.” 

Shepard kicked him with her heel, her mild expression never shifting. Garrus gave an exaggerated wince, which was enough to bring a genuine smile to Callie’s face. Shepard said, “Why don’t you give us a rundown and we’ll see what we can do.”

Callie nodded, and as she reached for a datapad and began to speak, her entire demeanor shifted from anxious and a little star-struck to poised and professional and, above all,  _concerned._  “I’m sure you’re both aware just how many orphans were left after… after everything. Overall, we’ve had a lot of luck placing kids with families, but… this pair has proven particularly difficult.” Callie sighed. “See, they’ve really bonded with each other. They tell people they’re sisters. We’d like to send them to the same home. And that’s where we’re having the problem. I thought you might know someone. Maybe. I know you probably don’t.”

“You must have people willing to take in more than one orphan,” Garrus said. It made Shepard smile to see him so effortlessly slip into the problem-solving mode now so second-nature to him. “Especially families.”

Callie nodded, but her brows dipped, obviously troubled. “We have. But… see, they’re  _not_  actually sisters. Rose is human and Tyrra’s turian, and we just haven’t had anyone willing to take on that kind of responsibility. The food thing, and the… well, you know, the differing backgrounds and cultures and expectations. I understand all that, but I just… I just don’t want to separate them. My boss says it’s time, and we’ve had people interested in them  _individually_ , but…” She shrugged helplessly, her eyes filling with tears. “They’ve already been through so much, and they’re such good girls.”

Shepard’s shock wasn’t quite as pronounced as Callie’s had been when they entered, but it still caught her hard in the gut and forced an audible gasp from her. Garrus put a hand to her lower back, and the warmth of the touch brought her back to herself. Callie shifted from one foot to the other, but before she could speak, Shepard waved a hand. “Sorry. It’s nothing. My mom was a Rose.” Her chuckle was a little watery. “It’s a common name.” She inhaled deeply. “A good name. But I’m still not sure what we can do for you, Callie. I’ll gladly lend my support to a public appeal, and Garrus might be able to pull some strings…”

“Can we meet them?” Garrus asked abruptly. Shepard turned, tilting her head in mild confusion. Perhaps she couldn’t hear the shift of emotions with the same clarity another turian might’ve, but she’d had a hell of a long time to get used to the subtle language his subharmonics spoke, and this was something unfamiliar. He flicked his mandibles in a brief smile. “Might help to know something about them, if we’re going to go out on a hunt for appropriate parents.”

“Sure,” she agreed. His voice had gone back to normal almost instantly. She half-convinced herself she was imagining the little trill of something like longing she thought she’d heard. “Finding parents for orphans. And yet still not the weirdest mission we’ve ever been on.”

“Not unless there’s a sentient plant vomiting up asari in there along with them.”

Callie didn’t try to hide her wide-eyed and rather horrified surprise, and, rather than trying to explain, Shepard tried to soften the blow with a smile, gesturing for the woman to lead them.

“They might be nervous,” Callie explained. Nervously. “It’s not every day a couple of war heroes stroll into your room.”

“I don’t know about that. Happens to me all the time,” Garrus said, wryly enough to make Callie forget her anxiety and laugh.

The nerves returned as she reached the end of the hall and it took three tries to key in the code to make the door obediently swish open. The room beyond was large and sunlit, but empty except for the pair of girls perched in the window seat. The turian’s voice lifted and fell in the patient cadence of a storyteller repeating herself for the thousandth time. 

Shepard had—erroneously, as it happened—expected them to be roughly the same age, but Tyrra was clearly the elder, and Shepard didn’t miss the way the turian subtly put her body between them and the smaller girl beside her.

“Hi!” cried Rose, ignoring her protector’s gesture, slipping off the windowseat and careening on little legs across the room toward them. Shepard guessed she was no older than six; Tyrra, following close behind, was probably nine or ten. It was harder for her to gauge turian age accurately, but the girl had a wary grace that spoke of departing childhood. With a side of growing up too soon. Shepard dropped into a crouch, her knees cracking their displeasure, just in time for Rose to skid to a halt in front of her. Rose blinked at her with wide green eyes, and grinned a gap-toothed grin. An still-angry scar slashed down one side of her freckled face, but did nothing to distract from the brightness of the smile. “Are you gonna be our mom?”

“Rosie,” said Tyrra, dropping a hand to Rose’s springy red curls and mussing them tenderly, even as her eyes watched them warily. “Don’t be silly. They’re way too important to want us.”

“But I like them,” Rose said, her lower lip trembling. Her hands closed into little fists at her sides. “She has red hair like me and he has blue eyes like you and if you weren’t so grumpy maybe we would have a mom and dad now.”

Tyrra’s chin lifted, and there was no mistaking the defiance in her tightly-held mandibles. She instinctively fixed her attention on Garrus. Like a good turian, bless her. “Please, sir. Please don’t take her away. I can take care of her. I did for so long.”

“She found me food and everything,” Rose said. “Even apples. I like apples, but then my tooth broke off.”

“It wasn’t the apple’s fault,” Tyrra explained quickly. “It was already loose. It’s a human thing. I looked it up.”

Rose bounced on her toes. “We had a fort, and I had a fluffy blanket and one time we had to run for a whole hour and we couldn’t stop and Tyr was holding my hand the whole time because there was  _millions_  of bad guys following us.  _Millions._ ”

“I know that feeling,” Shepard said, and behind her Garrus chuckled.

“You have nice eyelashes and you’re really pretty,” Rose said, shuffling a little closer, until she was almost pressed against Shepard’s knee. “Can I have a hug?”

“Rose, the admiral—” Callie began, stepping forward. Rose, however, ignored the admonishment and half-flung herself at Shepard, too-thin arms—apples or no apples—curling around her neck. Shepard braced herself against the floor with one hand, and the other arm swept up to curl protectively around the little girl’s back.

“Shit,” Shepard said, glancing over her shoulder at Garrus. “They’re ours, aren’t they?”

“Don’t curse around the children, Shepard,” Garrus replied, and this time the lightness of his tone was definitely layered with subharmonic longing. And hope. And a whole lot of the love that never failed to make her eyes prickle. “Or I don’t think they’ll let us keep them.”


	2. Publicity Stunt

As it turned out, becoming the legal guardians of two orphaned girls from completely different backgrounds wasn’t quite as simple as cracking a wall-safe and just keeping whatever happened to fall out. Even in a system as desperate as the one left by the Reaper war, even for people as well-known and  _respectable_  as Shepard and Garrus, the process took time.

Shepard found herself rearranging her schedule to spend more afternoons at the care facility; her time was moderately more flexible than Garrus’, and as a week dragged into two and went crawling inexorably toward three, she didn’t want the children to think stalling on the bureaucratic level had anything to do with them.

The story leaked, of course, as such stories always do, and her visits were soon dogged not by the enemies she could have dealt with—husks or harvesters or heretic geth—but by her least favorite breed of hound: paparazzi. She did her best to ignore them, but their relentlessness, their invasiveness, the tenor of ugliness in some of their questions grated, and somehow knowing children were involved made the whole thing a thousand times worse. It had never occurred to her to be anything but cool and precise and pointed with al-Jilani, for example, but suddenly she found herself fantasizing about using her tech-sabotage skills on cameras and punching the rudest bastards in the face.

Which wouldn’t help her pending adoption case in the slightest.

The fourth or fifth time she had to run the gauntlet surrounding the facility, one particularly vile asshole shouted, “Is it true this is all political maneuvering, Admiral? A plot to consolidate power and public support for the obvious human-turian agenda you espouse—” and only the door closing behind her stopped her from reaching for her omni-tool, consequences be damned.

All thought of the reporter vanished when she saw Tyrra standing before her, slight figure contorted into a kind of tense attention that might’ve looked at home on a new recruit, but in the body of a turian nine-year-old just made Shepard want to pull the girl into a hug and soothe her with whispered promises. She did neither.

Rose was the effusive one, the one whose arms were always reaching, the one whose heart was so wide open one couldn’t help responding to her in kind. Tyrra was quieter, more cautious, her sharp eyes always watching for anomalies, for hostiles, for threats. It only made Shepard want to protect her more, of course, but on Tyrra’s terms, not her own. That was important. This whole  _attempted parent_  thing was new to her, but she knew that much.

“Where’s your sister?” Shepard asked, when a moment of silence stretched into several, and no redheaded hurricane came careening into the room.

“Sleeping, ma’am,” Tyrra said. “She had bad dreams last night. Miss Callie’s with her.”

“Please, Tyrra.” Shepard didn’t have to crouch all the way down like she did when she was talking to Rose, but she hunched anyway, enough to look the turian girl in the eyes. “Ma’am’s pretty formal. I’d like it if you—”

“You’re not my mother,” Tyrra interrupted, her subharmonics wavering the way a human child in the same situation might’ve betrayed themselves with a trembling lip. The low keen of still-fresh, still-raw grief was a knife, a solid reminder that no matter how happy Shepard was to step into this role, it wouldn’t have been possible without the avalanche of loss preceding it.

“I know,” Shepard said, sitting back on her heels. Tyrra, undaunted, glared down at her. “You’re not my subordinate, either, though. Most of the time even  _they_  don’t pull ‘ma’am’ out unless they’re in trouble.” She tried a smile; Tyrra didn’t take the bait. “I was going to say I’d like you to call me Shepard. It’s what my friends do. And, if nothing else, I’d like to be your friend.”

Tyrra’s mandibles said she wasn’t convinced. “I—we—Rosie—” Tyrra shook her head hard, and clenched her hands into fists. Her subvocals still shuddered, but the emotion was no longer merely grief. Anger was there, and fear, and Shepard’s throat tightened in sympathy, closing around her own ineptitude, her own inability to solve the problem and make things right like she wanted to.

“She—Rose deserves better than being a… a publicity stunt.”

The words hit with the force of a krogan headbutt. A  _charging_  krogan headbutt. Shepard forced herself to absorb the blow, to take the sudden sucker punch of pain and horror and grief of her own and roll with it.

“Tyrra,” she said, “did someone say those words to you?”

For a moment, Shepard thought Tyrra wouldn’t answer. The stiffness turned mulish, the head-tilt defiant. “They keep trying to take our picture,” Tyrra finally said, and once she started the words gushed out in a torrent so rapid Shepard could barely keep up with them, let alone attempt to translate the wildly shifting subtones at the same time. “This one got all the way to the garden when we were out playing. He was dressed up in a costume, like Miss Callie’s uniform. But it was all wrong, because he had this camera and he was telling Rose to smile. I yelled at him to get away from her.” She dipped her head, foot scuffing the floor between them. “He kept saying things like how she was so cute and of course you’d want her and Miss Callie was yelling too but he wouldn’t listen. He got his camera really close to Rosie and she was scared because it had blue lights? You know, like… like it was the same color as husk eyes, and she has bad dreams about that and I just got really mad because he kept getting closer and closer. I pushed him hard and he fell right into his camera and I guess it broke. He said didn’t I want to know the truth and didn’t I realize it was all a publicity stunt because everyone knows you won’t stop until the whole galaxy is dancing to your fiddle. I said I didn’t know what a fiddle was and Rose started to cry but he didn’t even care. He said you’d get rid of us when we weren’t useful anymore and he said why would anyone want a… a, um, he called me a bad word humans sometimes use for turians that Miss Callie says I’m never supposed to say, and—”

“Tyrra,” Shepard said gently, so gently, while her imagination played through a particularly vivid daydream whose poetic justice would’ve put Archangel’s kill list to shame. It took a great deal of effort to keep the seething rage from her tone. “I am so sorry. That should never have happened to you. Some people—”  _deserve death by exploding camera after a long, slow lesson in just how evil it is to bully children for a story_  “—some people aren’t nice. But that doesn’t make what they say true.”

“But it  _is_  true,” Tyrra protested, her expression temporarily an open book, and Shepard distraught by what she read on the pages. “Rose is so cute and small and good. Rose is nice. She loves everybody. When I pushed the man down, Rose forgot she was crying. She asked if he was okay and if he needed some ice cream.  _I_  wanted to hurt him. I’m not nice. I know—” She swallowed, wrapping her skinny arms tight around herself in the hug she wouldn’t allow Shepard to give. “I know you’re only taking me because you want Rose. Everyone wants Rose.”

Still on her knees, Shepard eased herself a little closer, still leaving plenty of distance between them. Tyrra didn’t step backward, didn’t flinch, didn’t move away. Shepard turned her hands, showing her open palms in a gesture of submission, of peace. “When I was a little older than you, my mom and dad died. They were… they were killed.”

“By Reapers?” Tyrra asked.

“No, this was before that, but it was still bad. I—the truth is, I was really messed up because of it for a really long time. And when I was in the middle of being really messed up, I was… taken in by some people who treated me and what happened to me like… well, like a publicity stunt.” Tyrra took a little step forward, her arms dropping back to her sides, and Shepard tried not to hold her breath. “The thing is, I know a little bit what it’s like to be sad and scared and to hope someone’s going to help you only to have them throw you in front of men like the one who found you in the garden, and I want you to know I would do anything,  _anything_  to protect you from people like that. I won’t always succeed, but by God, I’ll try.”

Another little step, and a hand twitching almost as though its owner wanted to reach out. “Because of Rose?”

“No, sweetheart. Because you are so smart and so brave and so caring, and you deserve to have someone on  _your_  six for a change. You know what that means? On your six?”

Tyrra nodded. “When someone’s watching your back so you don’t have to worry about it. My mom used to say that to my dad and he’d put his arm around her and say, ‘Well, except for that one time,’ and she’d laugh. I didn’t understand that part.”

“I’d like it if you told me more about them sometime,” Shepard said. “And I’m not—I’m not trying to replace them. Not ever. But sometimes… sometimes when you lose one family, you get to find another, like I found Garrus. Like I found… oh, Tyrra, like I found so many people I’d like you to meet. I’d like you to be a part of that family, but, more than that, I’d like to be a part of  _yours_. A part of the one you started with Rose. If you’ll let me.”

One more step. Tyrra’s foot brushed Shepard’s knee. “That’s stupid. I can’t make you do anything. You’re a  _hero._ You can do whatever you want.”

Shepard shook her head. “Nope. Not even close. You tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll respect that.”

“But I’m just a kid.”

“I’m not saying it’s not a lot of responsibility, but you’ve done a pretty good job so far.” Shepard smiled. “Garrus would probably say something about a good turian deserving the rank she’s risen to. Or he’d make a joke. Either way, he’d probably make you feel better. He’s good at that.”

The noise Tyrra made was the closest to a laugh Shepard had yet heard from her. Strange, how such a small thing could be simultaneously so thrilling and heartbreaking. “He’s nice.”

“He is,” Shepard agreed.

“Does he really want to be part of my family too? My family with Rose?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

Tyrra stood close enough now that Shepard saw the rise and fall of her deep breath. Then she stuck out her little hand. “This is what humans do, right? When they’re going to make a deal? Rose says sometimes they spit, but that’s gross.”

“Spit is optional. And gross. I agree.”

“Okay. So let’s make a deal that we can at least try.”

Shepard took the hand in hers and shook it firmly. “You’re on, kiddo. Now, I’ll tell you what I tell everyone in my big old mess of a family, okay? My door’s always open. You can talk to me about whatever you want, whenever you want and I promise I’ll listen, and I’ll try to help as best I can.”

Tyrra nodded, but when her hand dropped away from Shepard’s, it immediately plucked at the hem of her tunic. “If I tell you about my parents will you tell me about yours?”

Shepard swallowed, nodded. “Seems like a fair exchange.”

“Ma’a—Shepard?” Tyrra’s voice quavered. “Can I—am I allowed to have a hug even if I’m not sure I want you to be my mom?”

Shepard nodded gravely. “Families are a lot bigger than moms and dads and kids, Tyrra, and anyone in my family can have a hug whenever they like.”

“Okay, good,” Tyrra said, inching forward and closing the last of the distance between them, arms squeezing with the desperate tightness of someone denied affection—someone forced to be so, so much older than her years—for far too long. “Can we please come with you soon?”

“If I have to beat down the gates of hell to do it,” Shepard vowed.

Tyrra curled against her, tucking her head under Shepard’s chin, the flick of her mandibles tickling her clavicle. “I don’t know what that means.”

Shepard chuckled, shifting until her cheek rested softly against Tyrra’s forehead. “It means it’s about time the bureaucracy machine holding me back remembers I once fought Reapers and thresher maws on foot. Paperwork doesn’t stand a chance.”


	3. Home

The day the girls came home, Garrus ran the entire thing as tight as any op he’d ever executed in his days as Archangel. People like him and Shepard always had enemies—usually of the extreme variety—and, paranoid or not, he wasn’t prepared to leave himself, or the girls, or Shepard, open to attack of any kind it was in his power to prevent. Even if the attack that came was only the assault of nosy reporters. Hell, _especially_ if was only the assault of nosy reporters; he’d neither forgiven nor forgotten the bastard who’d managed to infiltrate the care facility, and he certainly wasn’t about to subject Tyrra and Rose to a repeat.

“You have the look,” Shepard murmured, nudging him with her hip. He glanced down to find her smiling up at him. She’d gone with civilian clothing, soft green blouse and slim-fitting black trousers—no hint of Alliance blue or Admiral’s bars, nary an N7-red stripe in sight. With some reluctance, he’d followed her example, though he hadn’t been willing to forgo his visor, no matter how recognizable it made him. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, wishing for the heaviness of ablative plate.

“There’s no look,” he said.

“Oh, there’s definitely a look.” She fixed him with a look of her own, decidedly impish. It didn’t quite erase the faint shadows beneath her eyes, or the lines of strain at their corners. “It’s a bit terrifying.”

He scowled at her. “And how are you managing to stay so calm?”

Smiling, she briefly rested her cheek against his shoulder. “I’m not. I’m just better at not looking like I’m going to eviscerate anyone who dares step a toe out of line. Lots of practice. There was this one smartass C-Sec cop…” 

“Funny,” he said.

Laughing, she entwined her fingers with his and squeezed his hand hard. “It will probably be fine—”

“And if it isn’t?” he interrupted. “If—”

“And if it isn’t,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “we’ll kick ass and take names.” Her smile turned wry. “And prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

His mandibles flicked into an answering smile. “I’m not promising evisceration won’t happen.”

“If it’s called for, I’ll help.” She stood on her toes and pressed a kiss to his face, and he caught her about the shoulders with one arm, hugging her tight to his side. “I’m stronger than I look.”

Disembowelment, in the end, was avoided, because Garrus’ plan went off perfectly. Steve Cortez and a handful of decoys drew off the majority of the onlookers. Diana Allers, with the promise of an exclusive interview later, pretended at an insider tip that had the rest milling in front of a location an hour away from where Shepard and Garrus actually emerged. Some of their most trusted colleagues watched unseen; Garrus hadn’t wanted to frighten the girls with an armed escort, though the thought had crossed his mind. He thought, for a moment, about Sidonis. And then he let the thought go again, almost without pain. 

Joker, accepting his temporary demotion to mere skycar driver, took them on a rambling, long route. The girls sat with their faces pressed to the windows, poking at each other and pointing every time some new sight rushed past their view. Even Tyrra’s natural caution seemed to ease a little, and once or twice she laughed at Rose’s exuberant appreciation of everything from the color of the sky to the sight of the ocean to the appreciation of Joker’s unnecessarily fancy turns. Shepard protested a sharp corner and an unexpected dip; Joker only glanced at her and said, “Mako.” Garrus laughed. Shepard swatted at him.

Garrus couldn’t have said why, but as soon as they walked into the house some inexplicable _difference_ permeated the air. It was something about the sound of so many more voices, so many more footsteps, and it was something else, too, like the house—always too big for just the two of them—approved. He chuckled at this, shaking his head, and followed Shepard and the girls down the hall, both small duffel-bags slung over his shoulder.

“Oh, wow,” Rose said, when they opened the door to her bedroom. “Oh, _wow_. Oh, wow! Wow, Tyrra, look, wow!”

Red curls bouncing, Rose bounded to the bed and pushed down on it with her hands. “Wow, it’s soft. Like, _super_ soft. It’s probably the softest bed in the whole _world._ ”

Tyrra followed at a more sedate, less effusive pace. Garrus didn’t miss the way her eyes darted around the room, taking in the human bed, the little human desk, the human chairs, the way everything was decorated in the green and gold Callista had assured them were Rose’s favorite colors. “It’s like a forest,” Rose said, sitting on the edge of her bed and giving an experimental bounce or three. “It’s as big as my _whole_ house was. Tyr, we can make the _biggest fort_. We can—” She didn’t finish, though. She hopped down from the bed and padded over to Garrus, looking up at him with a faintly betrayed expression. “Where’s Tyrra’s stuff? She needs a different kind of pillow or her neck hurts.”

“It’s fine, Rose,” Tyrra said, her subharmonics far too even and careful for a child her age. Garrus swallowed, not trusting his own voice in answer.

“Oh,” Shepard said, her voice slipping effortlessly into the silence. “This one’s just for you, Rose.” She crossed the room, opening a second door. With a peculiar kind of tentativeness—so unlike her battlefield bravado—that made Garrus’ heart clench a little, she said, “Tyrra’s is right next door. We thought you might like to be close. But if you want to share, you can do that too.”

Tyrra moved to stand next to Shepard, peering into the room beyond. They’d gone to some length to fill it with turian furniture, and Solana had sent a shipment of draperies and mementos from Palaven, little bits of home to soothe someone so far away from the planet of her birth. Garrus had even managed to hunt down banners from the regiments her parents had served in; they hung in places of honor against walls the same deep red as Shepard’s N7 stripe. Unlike Rose, Tyrra walked slowly around the perimeter of her room, her talons brushing surfaces gently, almost as though she expected them to vanish at her touch. She lingered beneath the banners for a long time, chin lifted, spine straight, and when she finally turned away, her eyes were bright in a way he hadn’t yet seen them. For one, horrified moment, he thought she was going to salute him. Instead, she only smiled. A real smile; the kind of smile a kid’s face was made to wear. “I really like the red walls,” she said. “It feels like a good home.”

Rose said, in a hushed and reverent whisper, “What if we make a fort in _both_ rooms? With a blanket tunnel? And _snacks_.”

“Snacks we can do,” Garrus said. “And I can teach you a little something about structural soundness, if fort-building’s your aim.”

“Can you help us?” Tyrra asked. “I mean, just with the hard parts. We can do most of it.”

“Definitely,” Garrus replied. “How about you, She—”

But Shepard wasn’t in the room. She’d disappeared so silently and suddenly he half-expected she’d used her tactical cloak. His mandibles flared, but he managed to keep his tone even when he said, “First step: collect every blanket and pillow and chair you can find. A building’s only as good as its materials. I’ll be back in a minute. With, um, snacks.”

He found Shepard in the hallway, arms wrapped tightly around herself, head bent.

“You okay, Shepard?” he asked softly. “Not—not having regre—”

“Oh, no,” she said, lifting her head. Tears sparkled beneath her lashes, and she dabbed them away, shaking her head firmly. “No, not that. Never that. Not at all. I’m just… happy, I guess.” Her chuckle was watery. “If Allers could see me now, I swear.”

“Don’t you mean if _Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani_ could see you now?”

“Admiral Shepard,” Shepard said, in a near-perfect mimicry of al-Jilani’s voice, “are these emotions? Is it true you’re human after all? Humanity needs to know, Admiral. Or is this just the first step in your plan to build an army of your own, one war orphan at a time?”

“Definitely the army,” Garrus murmured, wrapping his arms around her, tucking her head under his chin. “She’s right to be concerned.”

“Very funny,” she said, slipping her arms around his waist in a mirror of his gesture. “I know where you sleep, Vakarian.”

“I should hope so.”

A moment later, they nearly stumbled when Rose flung herself at their legs, wrapping her own small arms around them, as far as she could reach. Tyrra didn’t quite hug, but she did lean against his side, her head tilted against his hip. He dropped a hand to cup the top of her skull, and she made a pleased noise deep in her throat.

“I like hugs,” Rose said, squeezing hard. “Can we have pizza for dinner? You have to make a different kind for Tyr, though.”

“Sure,” Shepard said, extricating herself from the embrace and bending down to hoist Rose onto her hip. Tyrra slipped her hand into Garrus'. “Dextro and levo pizzas coming right up. But first… don’t we have a marvel of pillow and blanket engineering to create?”


	4. Skota

Telling himself he was only going to close his eyes, Garrus settled back in his favorite chair, only to be startled out of a deep sleep what felt like mere moments later. The darkened window and the groggy state of his head told him he’d been asleep much longer than he’d intended. In a different time, he’d have been awake instantly, alert to whatever danger had roused him. Now, though, he hardly stirred, listening to the sound of Shepard bustling in the kitchen, enjoying the scent of whatever she was concocting. He smiled fondly, remembering the days not so very long ago when she’d been terrified of turian cuisine, and not much more comfortable cooking for herself.

Though he heard Shepard banging pots, listening to music and humming along, he didn’t hear the children. No laughter, no vids, no sound of exuberant game-playing or shrieking teasing. Tyrra was the quieter of the two, and sometimes managed whole hours of near-silent entertainment. Rose, on the other hand, was never quiet. She even slept noisily, murmuring to herself and to whomever kept her company in her dreams. A quiet Rose was a Rose up to no good, as they’d discovered the day they found her dangling from her bedroom window (“I was just pretending to fly and then I got stuck!”), or the time they’d found her industriously and quietly decorating the walls of the upstairs bathroom with a set of scented markers (“This is a boring color! I was making pictures of all of us having fun!”), or the time they only realized she’d escaped the house entirely when the perimeter sensors started shrieking (“I was on an adventure!).

He was about to rise and go looking for them when the sound of shuffling footsteps in the dark betrayed tiny invaders. Relaxing into his seat, he closed his eyes again, pretending to sleep. A thump was followed by a hiss of annoyance and Tyrra muttering beneath her breath about stupid furniture and dark rooms and sharp corners.

“Shh,” Rose hissed. 

Tyrra said, indignant enough to lift her voice above a whisper, “If you’d just let me—”

“No,” Rose interrupted. “I told you, it’s a surprise. You have to be quiet.”

“Rosie,” Tyrra admonished. “M—Shepard said he had a long day. I heard her. She said he looked worse than he did after a ride in the Mako, and it sounded _really_ bad. She’ll be mad if we wake him up.”

“You can call her Mom, Tyr,” Rose said, forgetting her own whisper. Knowing the darkness would hide it, Garrus let himself smile. He couldn’t see her, but he knew exactly the tilt of her head, and guessed she had her fists balled on her hips to boot, a tiny picture of exasperation. “You’re allowed, you know. I don’t even know why you’re being so weird about it. Lots of kids have different moms and dads now, and we have really, really good ones.”

“I know that,” Tyrra replied, the strained tightness in her subharmonics betraying the ongoing struggle. “I’m not ready yet.”

Rose sighed, and by the muffled quality of her voice when she replied, Garrus guessed she’d wrapped her sister in a hug. “’S okay, Tyrra. Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

“You didn’t,” Tyrra lied.

“Yeah, I did. I can always tell when your voice does that thing.”

When Rose squeaked, Garrus decided Tyrra had returned the hug with exuberance. “Shh!” Rose repeated.

“I’m not the one who sounds like a pack of varren on a rampage when she’s just walking down the hall,” Tyrra said, but the tension was gone from her voice, and laughter had replaced grief. “And you’re the one doing all the squealing.”

“I wasn’t!”

“You probably woke him up.”

“No! Tyrra!” Her voice dropped back into a whisper that would’ve woken him instantly, if he’d miraculously managed to sleep through the rest of the exchange. “Tyr, did I?”

“I don’t think so,” Tyrra said, after a moment, her voice so much closer it took a great deal of effort for Garrus to keep from startling. After a lifetime of sneaky younger sister followed by equally-stealthy Shepard, Garrus considered himself quite an expert at hearing people creep up on him, but Tyrra had managed to approach virtually soundlessly. He found himself grateful Rose couldn’t sneak as silently; she’d be unstoppable. “He’s making the little snoring sound.”

Garrus swallowed his chuckle, turning it into a sleepy mumble. Rose bounded across the room, surprisingly loud for such a tiny child, which he was infinitely grateful for because the sound was the only warning he got before she launched herself into his lap and shouted, “Happy birthday!” at the top of her lungs.

He didn’t have to pretend to be surprised. Rose hit him with force enough to leave him gasping, flinging her arms around his neck. She started singing a lilting, off-key rendition of a song humans often seemed to sing to each other at birthday celebrations. The lights flicked on a moment later, and he blinked into the brightness. Shepard stood in the door, some kind of alien cooking utensil in one hand, spatters of food all down the front of her clothing, wearing an expression that might’ve been comical if it had been any less worried.

“Oh, thank God,” she said, amusement not quite able to banish the genuine concern from her tone. “Rose, sweetheart, it is _dangerous_ to wake a paranoid turian from a dead sleep.”

Rose shifted on his lap, one arm still clinging to his neck, the other gripping the edge of his cowl tightly. “What’s paranoid mean?”

“It means I used to shoot first and ask questions later when people jumped me without warning,” Garrus said. Rose’s lips parted in a shocked ‘o’, her eyes widening dramatically, and he gave her a brief squeeze. “ _Those_ bad guys were, however, quite a lot quieter than some little girls I could mention.”

“You _were_ awake,” Rose said, her face falling. “Tyr, you said he was sleeping.”

“I said I thought he was.” Tyrra’s mandibles flicked, and Garrus borrowed a gesture of Shepard’s a winked to acknowledge her bit of subterfuge. She rewarded him with a grin so genuine and effortless it made his breath catch. “Besides, I know about what happens when you wake up a, um, paranoid turian.”

“And I might’ve already been awake, but I’m still surprised,” Garrus admitted. “I… might’ve forgotten about my birthday.”

Shepard laughed. “I thought you did. Your assistant had to rearrange your schedule entirely to get you here for dinner.” She glanced over her shoulder, paling slightly. “Which may or may not be burning to a crisp as we speak. Fifteen minutes.”

“We can always order in,” he called after her, but she’d already vanished—silently; no pounding footsteps for Shepard—back down the hall. He lifted his browplates at Tyrra and asked conspiratorially, “So, what’s she making?”

“Something good,” Tyrra said, edging closer. “It’s my favorite.” She scratched her head and bounced on her toes, in her a gesture of uneasiness rather than excitement. “But it’s _your_ birthday. It should’ve been your favorite.”

“Maybe we have the same favorite,” Garrus said, shifting sideways on his chair, making space. Tyrra hesitated a moment longer, and then climbed up to perch on the arm. Rose, still snuggled into Garrus’ lap, grinned at her sister. “For both our sakes I hope your favorite’s not chittka. Only one person in this house can whip up a halfway edible chittka, and I guarantee it’s not Shepard.” He made a face, and Tyrra giggled, shaking her head. “Dulcia?” Tyrra shook her head again, eyes shining. “Not skota? I do love a good skota.”

Tyrra brought her hands together, such hope in her expression and the flare of her mandibles that Garrus would’ve pretended to love skota even if it _wasn’t_ actually one of his favorite dishes. “I helped,” she said. “ _And_ I chose all the best ingredients.” Sliding down from the arm of the chair, she slipped into the chair next to him, folding her slim body into the narrow space and smiling up at him. “M—Shepard said your mom put vatha in her skota. So did… so did my mom. I never knew anyone else who did that. I bet your mom was nice.”

“She was,” Garrus agreed. “I bet yours was nice, too.”

“She was,” Tyrra said, but without the grief in her subharmonics that usually accompanied any mention of her dead parents. “I’m… I’m really glad we get to be here for your birthday. She—Shepard says you didn’t really get to have any parties because of the war, and that was a really long time.”

“We had Tyrra’s birthday when we were hiding,” Rose said, with the mournfulness of a child who clearly thought a missed birthday was the height of tragedy. “She didn’t get a cake or anything. I found her a pretty rock for a present. It had sparkles in it. Oh! I forgot!” Without warning, and with an alarming amount of force for an object at rest, Rose launched herself from his lap and ran off down the hall.

“My birthday skota is your birthday skota,” Garrus said softly. “I’m glad you’re here for my birthday, too. Even if I did forget it.”

Tyrra only shrugged, expression thoughtful. Finally, after a long moment, she said, “Sometimes when I think the words ‘mom’ or ‘dad’, I think about you and Shepard, now. I don’t know if it makes me happy or sad.”

“It’s okay if it’s a bit of both,” he said. 

“I just wish it could be easier,” she said, twisting her hands in her lap, for a moment so like Solana it made him smile. And wonder just when his schedule would allow for a trip back to Palaven. “I wish… I wish I could be more like Rose. She just… she just flings herself into everything. She doesn’t hold back.”

He tucked a finger under Tyrra’s chin and nudged her face up, looking her in the eye. “If you were more like Rose, you wouldn’t be like you. And we like you just how you are.”

With swiftness—and force—to mimic anything Rose had ever thrown at him, Tyrra hugged him hard. He told himself the sudden pressure was what stole his breath; he didn’t need Shepard and her expressive eyebrows to tell him he was lying to himself.

“I’m back!” Rose cried. Instead of pulling away, Tyrra only turned, keeping herself tucked under his arm, pressed tight to him. Rose clambered back up and wiggled against his other side. “Mom says it’s dinner in two minutes! I don’t think it burned! We made you a present!” Rose thrust a half-crumpled piece of paper at him. The drawing clearly depicted Rose and Tyrra, him and Shepard. They all held hands. An enormous yellow sun rose behind them. They were all smiling. “Tyrra did all the coloring,” Rose explained. “She’s way better at it than me. See? She even does _shading._ ”

“Thank you.” Garrus pressed his brow to Rose’s first, and then Tyrra’s. He felt her hum of pleasure, of acceptance, and his own subharmonics wavered as he said, “I think it’s the nicest present anyone’s ever given me.”

Shepard, damn her stealthiness, snorted from the doorway. “See if I ever give you a Black Widow again.”

“Isn’t there some terribly unflattering human saying about envy, Shepard?”

“It’s okay,” Tyrra said, “we’ll make you one, too. And we’ll make your favorite food when it’s _your_ birthday.”

“And a cake,” Rose added. “A big one, with, like, six layers.” She paused, frowning. “But you might have to help. Six layers is kinda a lot.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Shepard said. 

Laughing, the girls ran down the hall, but Shepard caught Garrus gently by the wrist and took a moment to look at the picture before rising on her toes to press a kiss to his scarred mandible. “Happy birthday.”

“Best one yet.”

She winced, pulling a theatrically horrified face. “You might want to reserve judgement until after you’ve tasted dinner.”

“Best one ever,” he amended, bending her backward with a kiss of his own. She smiled against him, until the sound of something breaking and Rose yelling, “ _Sorry!_ ” at the top of her lungs sent them laughing into the dining room, prepared, if necessary, to eat skota off the floor.


	5. Scars

Shepard waited until the third time Rose peeked around the corner to say, “Door’s open, sweetheart. You can come in, if you want. I’m just getting ready. Uncle Steve’s on his way over to hang out with you guys for a bit.”

Rose, gaze fixed on the ground, sidled around the frame, but lingered near the doorway. If the downturned face hadn’t been a clue something was wrong, the hunched shoulders and hands clenched in the fabric of her ruffled skirt would’ve been a dead giveaway. In typical eclectic fashion, Rose had chosen a black t-shirt covered in sparkly spiders (Garrus had shuddered) to go with the pink skirt reminiscent of a tutu over vibrant blue- and green-striped tights. Though Shepard had earlier wrestled the wild curls into a ponytail, they were loose again now, half-obscuring Rose’s face. Shepard couldn’t get a read on her expression, but the body language was troubling enough even without a clear view of her features. Turning away from the mirror, she crouched down as best her form-fitting dress would allow.

Before she could say anything either to soothe or to root out the source of Rose’s unhappiness, Rose said in a soft, almost tragic voice, “You look really pretty.”

All thought of tight schedules and formal dinners vanished. Shepard dropped to her knees and held her arms out; Rose hesitated only half a moment before burying herself in the embrace, pressing her damp cheek to Shepard’s shoulder. This close, Shepard felt the shuddering aftershock of tears, and was disappointed with herself for not realizing instantly how upset Rose was.

“Hey,” she murmured. “You want to talk about it? Did you hurt yourself? Have a fight with someone? Did something break?”

Rose nodded, but said nothing.

“Rosie.” A faint twist of panic made her gut clench. “I can’t help if I don’t know the problem.”

“Can’t help anyway,” Rose mumbled, words muffled against Shepard’s chest.

“You want to let me be the judge of that, maybe?”

Rose jerked her head up, green eyes even greener behind the sheen of fresh tears. “I’m ugly. Even you can’t change that.”

Shepard blinked, inhaling sharply. The panic in her belly shifted suddenly into rage, hot and horrible, and it took three deep breaths to cool it to the point she could speak almost naturally. “Someone said that to you?”

_Because, let me tell you, I know a Spectre who’s not so retired she couldn’t make their life absolutely miserable._

For a moment, Rose looked so defiant the tears were nearly forgotten. The little jaw jutted, and her teeth were obviously clenched.

“It’s not tattling to tell me if someone’s being mean to you, sweetheart.” Shepard hitched her skirt so she could ease herself to the bathroom floor, settling Rose more easily in her lap. She stroked Rose’s hair softly, rhythmically, less to straighten or tidy than to comfort.

Finally, Rose sighed. “It’s just this boy at school. He says my scar scares the other kids and I should wear a mask so no one has to look at how ugly I am.”

Closing her eyes, Shepard counted backward from ten, and considered it a small blessing that she and not Garrus was hearing this particular confession. She didn’t want to consider what brand of poetic justice might spring to life in his mind, kid or no kid.

Pushing aside her own inappropriately murderous thoughts, she squeezed Rose close and said, “He’s jealous.”

“That doesn’t even make sense. He doesn’t have a big ugly scar across his whole face. He has stupid perfect hair and stupid perfect teeth and a stupid perfect nose and no freckles and he’s not ugly at all.”

“I beg to differ, dearest. People hurt other people because they feel bad about themselves. He sounds like a miserable little son of a bitch, and—”

“Mom,” Rose gasped, eyes wide. “You’re not s’posed to say that.”

Shepard’s lips twisted. “Yeah, well. Some people deserve it.” She dropped a kiss on Rose’s brow and continued, “You are not ugly. You are kind and friendly and warm and people love you.”

Shock subsided into skepticism. “But I’m not pretty. Not like you.” Rose reached up and pressed her little hands to Shepard’s cheeks. “You don’t have any big ugly red scars.”

Shepard couldn’t help it. She chuckled. Affront instantly creased her daughter’s face. Shepard tried to kiss her again, but Rose wriggled away, glowering. “Oh, Rose. If you only knew. Come here. Let me show you something.”

Rose gave a reluctant nod. Shepard maneuvered to her feet, feeling the old ache in her hip that had never quite managed to heal itself, cybernetics or not, and hoisted Rose into her arms. Crossing the room, she settled Rose on the edge of the bathroom counter and turned her to face the mirror.

“Okay,” Shepard said, looking at Rose’s reflection. She lifted a hand and drew a line through her own left eyebrow. “I used to have a scar here. I got it when I was seven. My parents told me not to climb the big tree out back, and I climbed the big tree anyway.”

“You fell?”

“Oh, I fell. On my face. Had to get stitches and everything. The doctor said I was lucky. Half an inch lower, and I’d’ve lost my eye.”

Rose’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s it now?”

“I’ll get to that.” Shepard ran her fingertips down her cheek, tracing the old wounds she’d woken with on Lazarus Station. “I had a whole bunch of scars here. Really bad ones. For a while, my whole body was scarred. Head to toe, no lie.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“Am not.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Is it working?”

“No,” Rose said, but her lips twitched.

“Guess I’d better keep trying, then.” Shepard traced a final cut, almost an exact echo of Rose’s red and ragged scar. “I had one here when I woke up after the war.”

“Like mine?”

She nodded. “Pretty much. And some burns. And a whole lot of broken bones. You ever broken a bone?”

Rose shook her head.

“Good. Don’t. It hurts.” Shepard scowled a mock-stern scowl. “Falling from the second story of a building will probably result in broken bones, just so you know. Or a broken head. Pretty hard to bounce back from a broken head, let me tell you.”

“I promised I wouldn’t try and fly out the window anymore, even if the tree does seem really close.” Rose extended her bottom lip in perfect picture of petulance. “So how come you got no scars now? Is mine going to go away too?”

“If you want it to,” Shepard said. “I think Dr. Chakwas would prefer you let it heal naturally and maybe get a bit older before she tackles it, but the technology exists.”

“Is that what you did?”

“Queen of the hard questions, aren’t you?” Rose grinned, like Shepard had complimented her. Lifting her shoulders, Shepard said, “I was… I was really, really hurt once. _Really_ hurt. And to fix me, they had to do a lot of experimental things. You know that word? Experimental?”

Rose shook her head, eyes intent on Shepard’s face in the mirror.

“It means no one had ever done it before, and it was really dangerous, and they didn’t know if it would make me better or make me worse. In my case, it made me better. But it also made all my scars go away. Old ones, new ones; they just don’t stick around very long.”

“That’s weird.”

“Really weird, yes. I don’t actually recommend it.”

Rose reached up and twirled a curl around her finger, pulling it out straight and letting it bounce back into a ringlet. After three or four tugs, she said, “If… if Dr. Chakwas can make scars better, how come Dad never got his fixed?”

Shepard smiled. “He didn’t want to. I think he was proud of them. See, the thing with scars is that… they’re kind of like medals.”

“Like the ones on your fancy uniform?”

“Exactly. Only they’re ones you don’t take off.” She paused, reaching for the right words. “I liked my scars, in a way. They were part of me. They told me how far I’d come. They reminded me what I’d survived. They were all visible chapters in the story of my life. My body doesn’t let me keep the physical record anymore, so I just have to remember. And remembering can be hard.” She tapped Rose’s scar very lightly. “This is a story, too. And a medal. Bravery in the face of overwhelming odds. That’s a big deal.”

Rose kicked her feet back and forth, back and forth, the uneven thump thump of her heels momentarily the only sound in the room. “I don’t remember exactly what happened when I got my scar. But I remember when I woke up, because Tyrra was there. I was scared for a minute. I didn’t ever see a turian before, and my face hurt, and I thought… it’s stupid, but I thought she was a monster. I didn’t say that. Don’t tell her.”

Shepard made the universal gesture for _my lips are sealed,_ and Rose nodded as solemnly as if this were a vow sealed in blood.

“She came at me with her hands out, you know, like when you’re afraid something might jump at you or bite you? And she said, ‘You’re bleeding pretty bad. This is medi-gel. It’ll make your face feel better.’ I dunno why I believed her, but I did. Her eyes were nice, I guess.” Rose sighed, wrapping herself in a brief hug. “That was when my mama died. She curled up all around me when the wall fell down. After Tyrra put stuff on my face, I tried to put the rest on my mama. Tyrra didn’t even try to stop me. She just stood there, waiting, even when I started screaming.” She paused, pale beneath her freckles, eyes lost in the memory. Shepard wanted to curl up all around her, then, too. Blinking, a little shamefaced, Rose said, “I knew better. Mama said we always had to be quiet or the Reapers would get us. But she had all this blood on her face, and her eyes were just staring, and I couldn’t stop screaming.”

_—blood and fire and blood and her parents and a kitchen knife stuck in an alien chest and yellow paint bubbling and peeling and skin bubbling and peeling and so much blood—_

Shepard blinked back tears of her own. Rose, turning back toward her reflection, pulled her hair out of the way and stared hard at her scar for a long time. Finally, she lifted her chin and smiled up at Shepard. “I guess I know what you mean. It’s a bad memory and a good one at the same time, but I wouldn’t want to forget it. Maybe Dad’s right.”

“Oh, don’t let him hear that,” Shepard murmured, voice breaking a little unevenly. “We’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Hear what?” came Garrus’ voice from the bedroom.

“Save me from the selective hearing of turians.” Shepard made a face in the mirror and Rose laughed. Then, more seriously, she said, “You want me to stay home tonight?”

Rose shook her head, curls tumbling around her face. “No way. Uncle Steve said he’d take us for a drive. A good one. He does all the best loops.”

“Save me from show-off pilots, too, while we’re at it.” Kissing the top of Rose’s head, Shepard said, “In that case, make yourself useful and pass me my mascara.” This time her scowl was not entirely _mock_ -serious. “And wear your seatbelts.”

Still propped on the counter, Rose reached up and touched the spot where Shepard had earlier traced the memory of her old eyebrow-bisecting scar. Shepard caught the little hand and pressed another kiss into her palm. “Look, kiddo,” she said seriously, “pretty and ugly are just words. They don’t even mean the same thing to different people. They sure as hell aren’t worth getting upset about. All those other things I said? Kindness and bravery and generosity? You hold tight to those, okay? They’re way more beautiful than unmarked skin.” She grinned, tugging one of Rose’s curls. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re perfect. Anyone who says different can come talk to me.” She winked conspiratorially. “And then I will send them to Garrus. And no one will ever find the body.”

“Mooom,” Rose groaned, but she did it with a smile in her eyes and a laugh in her voice, and that, that was worth everything.


	6. Sick

The plaintive sound of a little voice woke Shepard as instantly as only a soldier trained to be battle-ready at the first murmur of threat could be, but instead of rolling off the bed into a crouch and grabbing a gun, she pushed herself upright with one arm, already reaching to comfort the shadowy figure beside her bed with the other. The dim light from the hallway reflected off tear tracks on Rose’s face, and the last drowsy vestiges of sleep vanished.

“Bad dream, sweetheart?”

The nightmares came fewer and farther between, but no one in the house was safe from them. Sometimes Shepard still woke gasping, clutching at her throat, haunted by the echoes of voices in a dark wood. Sometimes Garrus still woke her after dreams of his own, running the pads of his fingers over her face, her shoulders, the curve of her spine, as if making certain she was there, was real. The girls dreamed of things so much worse than boogeymen under the bed or monsters in the closet; they’d seen the monsters up close, and the boogeymen had destroyed their lives. Shepard counted it a win that the bad dreams had gone from a nightly occurrence to something much less frequent.

Rose shook her head, her sleep-wild curls shifting from side to side. Voice still thick with tears, she said, “I did, but—”

“You want to climb in here for a bit?”

“No, listen!” Rose cried, her voice breaking on the last syllable. Shepard swung her legs over the side of the bed, hooking her hands under Rose’s armpits and pulling her up on her lap. Instead of snuggling in, Rose squirmed backward, lifting her chin and dragging the back of one fist over her damp cheek. “I think Tyr’s sick. I was scared and I was gonna sleep with her, but when I—she was talking, and um, keening? That weird turian noise, anyway. And her eyes were open, but I don’t think she saw me, ‘cause she wasn’t talking to me. I never saw her have any kinda bad dream like that.”

In one of the crystalline moments she usually associated with a battlefield and overwhelming force, every sense shifted, until Shepard was aware not only of the girl on her lap, but the faint scent of dinner lingering in the air, the temperature of the floor against her bare feet, and the ticking of the old-fashioned clock whose pale face told her it was after midnight. That ticking seemed to slow down, buying her extra moments, buying her the time necessary to compartmentalize, to prioritize, to form plans and backup plans. She was so accustomed to having Garrus at her back, she almost barked out an order before she remembered he wasn’t there to act on it. His side of the bed was smooth, the blankets unruffled, his piles of turian pillows undented. 

She’d rolled her eyes when he worried about leaving them. “I managed just fine for thirty years without you, Vakarian,” she’d scoffed. “And if I was able to convince Grunt to play nice more often than not, I’m pretty sure I can wrangle two little girls for a week on my own.”

He’d left with a smart-ass remark about not betting against Rose in a krogan vs. tiny human battle of wills, but he’d left all the same, promising presents and daily vid-calls. They’d spoken to him after dinner. Tyrra had seemed fine then, hadn’t she? Or had she been a little more reserved, a little quieter? Had there been a clue, something she’d overlooked? Shepard pushed aside the looming spiral of self-recrimination and pressed a kiss to Rose’s brow, settling her back on her feet, saying, “Go put your shoes and coat on in case we have to leave, okay?”

In an unprecedented act of restraint, Rose accepted this without asking her usual half-dozen questions, dashing away down the hall. Shepard didn’t bother with shoes or a coat, and her longer stride had her in Tyrra’s room moments later. Tyrra had thrown off her blankets and lay staring at the ceiling, talons twisted in the sheets. Definitely keening. _First things first,_ Shepard told herself, stilling the panic and turning on the light. Tyrra didn’t appear to notice.

Over the years, she’d seen Garrus laid low only a couple of times by illness, and never anything like this. Shepard dropped to her knees beside the bed, touching the bare hide of Tyrra’s neck with one hand and flicking her omni-tool to golden life with the other. Tyrra gasped and rolled to her side, curling into a tight ball. Moments later, a familiar voice responded to Shepard’s call, doing an admirable job of pretending at wakefulness.

“Shepard?”

“Karin.” Shepard heard the brittle tension in her own voice, but couldn’t soften it.

“Tell me.”

She took a breath, assessing. “Tyrra’s sick. She’s got a fever. They’re more dangerous in turians, aren’t they?”

Chakwas’ voice remained calm, which only highlighted the strain Shepard heard in her own. “Is she responsive?”

“Mama,” Tyrra moaned, subharmonics a whine of despair. “Mama, no. Mama, _please._ ”

Shepard closed her eyes, feeling the hit of the word Tyrra never spoke like a fist to the solar plexus. “I think she’s hallucinating,” Shepard said. “Should I—I’m taking her to the hospital. I should definitely take her to the hospital.”

“No,” Chakwas snapped, precise as a whip-crack and with enough force to break through the sick, roiling feeling of helplessness welling up in Shepard’s gut. “I’m on my way. Let me make a decision once I examine her, Shepard. You needn’t invite a media circus if it’s unnecessary. Is Garrus—”

“Away. Due back in a couple of days. She was fine at dinner. I think she was fine. A little quiet, maybe, but she’s always quieter when Garrus is away. Maybe she was too quiet. Shit, I don’t know. She’s really warm.” Shepard swallowed past the tightness in her throat, fingers still resting gently against the softness of Tyrra’s too-warm neck. Her pulse tripped along too quickly. Shepard found herself longing for the information Garrus’ visor could’ve provided. “Should I call him? Should he be here?”

“Let’s assess the situation before we worry him needlessly, shall we? There’s no sense both of you going to pieces.” 

“But if she’s—”

Chakwas’ voice dropped, and even though Shepard saw through it and knew what she was doing, she still found herself ever so slightly soothed. “If she’s very ill, nothing he can do from a star system away will change it. I’ll be there shortly. In the meantime, I’d like you to draw her a lukewarm bath. It should help the fever.”

To her credit—and with no small amount of willpower—Shepard didn’t immediately panic the moment Chakwas disconnected. She took another deep breath, steeled herself, and asked the house’s computer to please start the bath, and to allow Karin Chakwas immediate entry upon arrival. The computer replied with reassuring steadiness Shepard was envious of.

Tyrra didn’t resist when Shepard bent and scooped her into her arms. Resting her cheek against Tyrra’s brow, Shepard murmured vaguely soothing platitudes, half-pleas and half-promises. Tyrra turned her head, nuzzling against her with a kind of desperation for comfort that brought a startling prickle of tears to her eyes. It hardly took any effort at all to carry her. Where Rose was small and sturdy and dense for her stature, especially now that she was getting regular meals, Tyrra was all slenderness, surprisingly light given her height. She felt positively fragile in Shepard’s arms. It was not a reassuring thought.

Rose stood outside Tyrra’s door, wearing rain boots and a bulky winter jacket over her pyjamas, complete with mismatched mittens and a too-long scarf. “Does Tyrra have to go to the doctor?”

“The doctor’s coming to us, actually,” Shepard assured her. “You don’t have to wear all those clothes if you don’t want.”

Rose ignored this, jogging along to keep up with Shepard’s stride, the tail of the scarf trailing on the floor behind her. “Is she gonna be okay?”

“Dr. Chakwas will be here—”

“Is she gonna die?”

The bluntness of the query made Shepard stumble, and she came down hard on her weaker-side knee with a grunt. Tyrra groaned as Shepard’s arms squeezed her more tightly. Shepard shifted at once, shaking her head in mute denial as she turned to face Rose.

“Well, is she?” Rose demanded, lower lip trembling and wide eyes already filling with tears, hands clenched into little fists at her sides. “There was this other kid that was going to come with us once, but he got sick real fast and in the morning—”

“No,” Shepard said. “No, Rose. No.”

The lip quavered harder. A series of rapid blinks freed fresh tears. “You’re not lying?”

“I don’t lie to you, dearest. I don’t know how sick Tyrra is, but Dr. Chakwas is the best. I’m sure she’d have told us to go to the hospital if she were really worried, okay?”

Rose nodded, eyes never leaving Shepard’s. “Should I go wait for her at the door?”

“If you promise to stay inside. I’m going to put Tyrra in the bath.”

“Tyr hates baths.”

“Yes, well. She doesn’t get a say.” In spite of her earlier words, the reassuring smile she tried for was a bit of a falsehood. Rose stared a moment longer, nodded as if to accept this, and then headed off toward the front door while Shepard pushed herself back to her feet and made her way to the master bathroom. The large tub was already full and waiting, but when Shepard tried to ease Tyrra out of her arms and into the water, Tyrra only clung tighter, murmuring in broken syllables Shepard’s translator couldn’t begin to make sense of. 

Without pausing, Shepard stepped over the lip of the tub. She shivered as the cool water lapped at her calves, but Tyrra was a too-warm reminder of the necessity, so she sank down until she could lean against the side, Tyrra mostly-submerged, head resting above the water against Shepard’s chest. Tyrra’s hand opened and closed beneath the water, as if reaching for something, so Shepard slid her fingers into the grip and let Tyrra hold tight.

“It’s going to be all right, sweet girl,” Shepard murmured against the top of Tyrra’s head. “If Dr. Chakwas can tackle near-death and rockets to the face, she can definitely fix whatever’s wrong with you, so don’t you worry one little bit.” Shepard shifted, sending a fresh wave of water over the side of the tub to pool on the floor. “I’m not supposed to say anything, but Garrus has a big surprise planned for you. I should warn you, though, it’s not a pony. Though I don’t think little girls from Palaven dream of ponies, do they? You’re probably already longing for a rifle, and that, I’m afraid, can definitely wait. So, it’s not a rifle, either. Want to guess?”

Tyrra said nothing, and Shepard wasn’t sure if silence was better than calling for a mother long-dead. She swallowed, and let herself shed a couple of the helpless tears she’d been blinking back since Rose first woke her, first said, _I think Tyr’s sick._ Only fifteen minutes had passed. Maybe twenty. She could hear the faint ticking of the clock in the bedroom from here, but the bathroom didn’t have one and she didn’t want to shift Tyrra to glance at her arm.

Minutes on a battlefield had never felt so eternal. Not even when she’d faced a Reaper on foot armed with a fancy laser pointer had time seemed so determined to crawl. She’d spent virtually the entirety of her adult life prepared to be the bulwark between civilians and danger, and to accept the consequences as necessary. She’d trained for it, prepared in every way it was possible to prepare, just to avoid the feeling of powerlessness now turning her limbs to lead and making her heart scream in her chest. 

“Fine,” she said, with brisk, false cheer. “You’ll have to just wait and see, then. But it’s really good. You definitely—you definitely want to be healthy for it.”

When Chakwas strode in no more than another quarter-hour later, Shepard was humming an off-key rendition of the turian lullaby Garrus sometimes sang the girls, telling herself it wasn’t merely her imagination that Tyrra seemed more comfortable and wasn’t nearly as feverish, telling herself the quiet was a positive sign and not a terrible one.

“Right then,” Chakwas said. “Up you get and let’s have a look at her.”

With liberal application of water to floor, Shepard managed to get them out of the tub with minimal jostling. She stepped carefully across the slippery tiles, settling Tyrra on her bed, propped against Garrus’ unused pillows. Chakwas laid a hand on her shoulder and smiled the kind of reassuring smile Shepard recognized from dozens and dozens of medbay visits. “Very well done, Shepard,” she said. “I’ll take over from here.”

Shepard shook her head, the ends of her hair shedding a torrent of water droplets. “I should—”

“You should sit out in the kitchen and eat a sandwich with your daughter,” Chakwas interrupted, handing her a towel. “And let me do what I do best. Agreed?”

“Are you sure you don’t need any—”

Chakwas said nothing. She didn’t have to. The look she leveled Shepard’s way was perfectly eloquent. Reluctantly, Shepard wrapped the large towel around her dripping body, and with a last glance at Tyrra looking so small and frail against the pillows, shuffled out of the bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen. 

Rose, still wearing boots and scarf, though mittens and winter coat now lay in a fluffy heap on the floor, had scaled the counter and was diligently slathering peanut butter across pieces of bread and then folding them in half, concentrating so hard the tip of her tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth. The whole picture—kid, tongue, scarf, more peanut butter sandwiches than any two levo-lifeforms could possibly manage to eat on their own—brought a faint giggle from the depths of Shepard’s gut. 

Knife in one hand and half-sandwich dripping peanut butter in the other, Rose looked up at her and said, “I like them better when there’s only one piece of bread. There’s more filling.”

“What a coincidence,” Shepard replied, rescuing Rose from her precarious perch and settling her in a chair at the table. “That’s exactly how I like my peanut butter sandwiches, too.” She plunked the plate of sandwiches down between them, and dutifully accepted one of the halves. They ate in silence. After a while, Shepard got up and poured them both glasses of milk.

They’d made a surprisingly large dent in the massive pile before Chakwas emerged from the bedroom.

“Is she—”

“She’ll be absolutely fine,” Chakwas said, liberating a sandwich for herself. “Extra peanut butter. Delightful. I’ve you to thank for this, I presume, Rose?”

Rose nodded, face lit up with pride, and pushed the plate across the table toward Chakwas. “Is Tyrra really gonna be okay?”

“Of course,” Chakwas said. “Nothing antibiotics and several days of rest won’t cure.” She met Shepard’s gaze. “She ought to be right as rain by the time Garrus gets home. Turians do take fevers hard, but they bounce back almost as quickly. I’ll visit the school tomorrow, make certain none of the other turian children are ailing. So bloody stoic, you know. She probably wasn’t feeling well for days, but they do resist complaining, don’t they? Even when they ought to.”

Shepard meant to thank her, perhaps even to make a joke about overreacting at her own expense, but instead she put her face in her hands and had to breathe through relief almost as debilitating as the earlier panic had been, because it was dangerously close to sobbing. The gentle pressure of Chakwas’ hand against the crown of her head brought her back to herself, and she looked up with tear-stung eyes. “Sorry,” she said. “People shooting at me I can handle. Sick kids not so much.”

With an arched brow and pointed smile, Chakwas said, “Yes, well. Now perhaps you understand how _I_ felt every time you stumbled into my medbay bleeding.”

“Ew,” said Rose, jamming the heel of yet another sandwich into her mouth.

“Indeed,” Chakwas agreed. “Now, let’s have another, and let your poor mother run in to see with her own eyes that I’m telling the truth about your sister.”

Shepard rose with a grateful nod, and did precisely that, though she didn’t actually _run._ Walked briskly. 

She couldn’t have said exactly what the difference was, but she felt it immediately. Tyrra rested easily now, no longer twisting the sheets, no longer keening. Shepard settled at her side, running the backs of her fingers from crest to mandible, and was surprised when Tyrra’s eyes fluttered open. It took a moment for them to focus, but they did.

“I had a bad dream,” she said.

“I know. It’s okay now.”

“I think I’m… I think I’m a bit sick.”

“Just a little,” Shepard agreed. “You’ll be better soon. Promise.”

“Okay,” Tyrra said, closing her eyes again. “I had a dream we were swimming and you told me there was going to be a big surprise.”

“Ahh,” Shepard said. “Maybe that one’ll come true.”

“Okay,” Tyrra repeated, her blinks slower, heavier, as she fought her fatigue. “Can you stay with me?”

“Sure thing, kiddo.” 

Shepard curled up at Tyrra’s side, so they faced each other. A moment later, a little hand reached for hers, twining their fingers together. “Thanks,” Tyrra said drowsily, her words slurred with imminent sleep. “You’re a… you’re a really good mom.”

“You’re a good kid,” Shepard replied, knowing any turian would be able to hear the choked-up emotion in her voice clear as day, but Tyrra was already asleep, snoring softly.


	7. Surprise

“I remember when I could fit my whole life in a duffle and a footlocker,” Shepard said, morosely casting her gaze over the sea of luggage in the entranceway waiting to be loaded into a skycar. Or two. Or eight. “Just the duffle, if I was traveling light.”

Garrus chuckled and draped an arm over her shoulders, tugging her close. Smiling, she rested her cheek against him. “You can’t tell me you managed to cram all those model ships and pets of various shapes and sizes into one bag. To say nothing of the other crap you hoarded over the years. Hell, Shepard, between chess sets and N7-branded clothing and weird Prothean devices, by the time we cleared out the _Normandy_ ’s cabin—”

“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled, interrupting him. “Laugh it up, big guy. At least half a dozen of these belong to you. Why, I remember the days you couldn’t be pried out of your single suit of armor, structurally-unsound rocket-blast holes and all, and look at you now. You’ve become quite the clotheshorse.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Garrus said, all mock innocence. “But I’m sure it’s a compliment.” He toed a particularly large chest. “You saying you’re okay leaving your… what is this, anyway? Shoes? Did you honestly pack a whole _crate_ of shoes?”

“We’re going for a long time,” she said, lifting a hand and brushing away his protest dismissively. “And I put some of the girls’ stuff in there. Uh. Coats. Or something.”

“Oh, that’s low, Shepard. Using your _children_ to mask your addiction. Time to stage that intervention.”

She grinned, pushing herself onto her tiptoes to press a kiss to his scarred mandible. “Only if you’re willing to face the music, too, Vakarian. I could name about, oh, three? Four? Ten? At _least_ tentimes I’ve heard you blow off Council business citing the children as an excuse. When I know for a fact they were _not_ actually sick, or upset, or desperately in need of immediate baths.”

His mandibles flared, eyes widening in indignant shock. “You wouldn’t.”

Hooking her fingers over the ridge of his cowl, she drew him close and lowered her voice, using the one she usually reserved for _smug Spectre dealing with unbearably honorable—and sexy—C-Sec officer._ Not that they had time to make good on the flirting, what with the car service set to arrive at any moment. “Mutually assured destruction, Garrus. You leave me my shoes and I won’t—wait, where _are_ they?”

Garrus snorted. “Your shoes? I swear I didn’t touch them. All kidding aside, I know better than to come between you and your plethora of overpriced scraps of—”

Shepard rolled her eyes and reluctantly released him, looking around. Bags. Boxes. Way too many suitcases. “Not footwear. _Children_. They’ve been quiet—and have left us alone—for at least ten minutes.”

Garrus looked at her. She looked at Garrus. Then he very slowly shook his head, and turned to look over his shoulder. “Rookie mistake,” he whispered. “Took our eyes off the target.”

“Lost count of the hostiles.”

He poked her hard in the ribs, but his mandibles trembled with barely-contained amusement. “You did not just call our—”

The sound of a thump, something shattering, and a half-panicked, high-pitched scream silenced him. Shepard beat Garrus into the living room, but only because she edged around him, had a head start, and didn’t actually have to pause to duck through doorways. The chaos she found was nothing like the calm, vid-watching serenity she’d left only a quarter-hour earlier. Rose stood with her hands outstretched. Though she didn’t appear to be injured, hers had definitely been the cry. And—if Shepard was honest—she’d likely been the source of the thump and the breaking of whatever was broken, too. Tyrra knelt in a sea of glittering glass shards, bent over, head almost touching the floor.

Garrus, hard on Shepard’s heels, skidded through the door and barely managed a “What—” before Rose shrieked again, and Tyrra shouted, “No, stop!”

Garrus froze. Shepard froze.

“I just wanted to bring him with meeeee.” Rose hiccuped a sob, hugging herself tight. “We were gonna be gone so loooong.”

“Him?” Shepard asked, baffled.

“Don’t move,” Tyrra begged. “You might step on him.”

“Oh no,” Garrus said, with no small amount of genuine horror in his subharmonics. “Not again.”

The horror was what tipped her off. Shepard’s gaze shot to the shelves beside the wall-mounted vidscreen. Books and knickknacks were out of place, and one of her model ships had obviously been launched into an unsurvivable crash landing. She winced when she realized it was the original _Normandy._ One of the shelves tilted at an unhealthy angle, as if it had been used for a ladder and had failed to uphold its end of the bargain. And at the end of that shelf, where Odysseus—poor old Odysseus, giving any cat a run for its money in the nine lives department—usually meeped indignantly from within his glass box, was nothing. No hamster. No box. No meeping.

“Shi—uh, crap,” Shepard said, gazing with fresh understanding at the glass all over the floor.

“He went under the chair,” Tyrra offered. “But then I lost him.”

The door chime rang, and they all jumped. Rose began to cry in earnest, and Shepard, watching her step carefully, crossed the level two glass hazard and scooped her up. Flinging her arms around Shepard’s neck, Rose wept even harder, mumbling apologies and begging not to be sent back to the orphanage, which only made Shepard hug her tighter. Hampered somewhat by a faceful of Rose’s riotous curls, Shepard sent a pleading look Garrus’ way.

“They’re not going to hold for us,” he said quietly, apologetically. “There are strings and there are strings, but a spaceport’s schedule is sacrosanct. Even I can’t pull those ones.”

“Don’t I know it,” she said. “Maybe get the luggage sorted? I’ll… I’ll see what I can do here.”

With a the reluctance of a soldier knowing he was sacrificing his partner for the good of the mission, Garrus backed out of the room and headed for the door. A third chime sounded. Insistently.

“He’s gonna diiieeeee,” Rose sobbed, as only a six-year-old could sob, her whole body trembling with the force of her despair. “It’s all my faaaault.”

“Sweet pea,” Shepard soothed, shifting Rose to her good hip and stroking her hair with the freed hand. “Odie lived all by himself in the belly of a starship for six months and came back fatter than ever. He’s not going to die. Not with the cookie crumbs you two leave from one end of this place to the other.”

Instead of having a calming effect, Shepard’s words only made Rose howl the wilder, and all the hair-patting in the galaxy had no effect whatsoever. Over Rose’s cries, Shepard heard the thump and drag of their vast quantities of luggage being loaded. Very effectively. And swiftly. 

“Any sign of him?” Shepard asked, a little desperate. Tyrra sat back on her heels and shook her head. “Can you take your sister and—”

“Nooooo!” Rose squirmed hard enough that Shepard nearly dropped her. “We can’t just leave! Mom, he’s gonna die, he’s really gonna dieeee!”

“I’ll find him,” she promised. “No one’s going to die. But it’ll be easier if I don’t have to worry about you and Tyrra getting sliced to ribbons by broken glass, okay?”

Rose blinked up at her, face a miserable mess of tears and snot and sweat, eyes still leaking, trembling lower lip caught between her teeth.

“Oh, honey,” Shepard said, kissing her brow while trying to keep the worst of the grime off her clothing. “It’s going to be fine. But wash your face, okay? You’re going to scare your dad half to death if you go out there looking like that.” 

Once the girls were safely out of the room, Shepard planted her fists on her hips and turned in a slow circle, eyes narrowed. No scurry of movement betrayed the location of her wayward rodent. “You’ve got about thirty seconds to show yourself, you little furry bastard,” she muttered. “Or I’m buying a snake and feeding you to it.”

“Shepard?”

“One minute,” she shouted in answer, glowering at the floor.

Sighing heavily, she took a step toward the door. “Fine,” she said to the empty room. “I guess I’m just going to leave…”

Three steps into her journey, she heard the unmistakable sound of her hamster mocking her. The vivid memory of chasing him around the _Normandy_ ’s subdeck—on her hands and knees at one point—came back in a rush. She took another step away. Odysseus chittered again. To her left. Two feet away. Maybe three. Out in the hall, Garrus called for her a second time.

“By the way,” she said casually, “I was lying about the cookie crumbs. The floors are _spotless._ ”

The answering squeak was decidedly concerned. And nearer by at least a foot. She crouched down, but didn’t turn around, and with all the patience she’d honed in years as a sniper with an excellent one-shot kill record, Shepard held her breath and waited. The scritch of tiny paws came closer and in one swift movement, Shepard whirled, cupping her hands around the wriggling rodent with a cry of triumph. Peering into her hands, a pair of beady eyes glared back.

“You probably planned it this way, you greedy monster. I know she gives you extra treats.”

“Meep,” Odysseus meeped.

Shepard snorted, shifting the hamster to one hand and stroking him between the ears with a fingertip. His whiskers twitched in mute pleasure. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Not that I was ever planning to leave you behind.”

The sea of luggage had vanished by the time she made her way to the entrance, but Tyrra and Rose remained, staring up at her with expressions of mixed hope and hopelessness oddly identical for all the radically different structure of their faces. She almost laughed. Instead, she held out the backup glass case, complete with cowering space hamster.

“Wow,” Rose breathed. “You really _are_ a hero.”

Shepard chuckled, shaking her head, entrusting the case to Rose’s outstretched arms. “Good to know saving the hamster’s what convinced you.”

“To be fair,” Garrus said mildly, holding her coat so she could slip her arms into the sleeves, “the little guy’s a lot harder to see than a Reaper.”

“Sneakier, too,” she agreed. “Infinitely more nimble. Fewer death lasers, though.”

“A fact we’re all grateful for,” Garrus said, hustling them out the door and into the waiting skycar.

“Are you going to tell us the surprise yet?” Tyrra asked, once they were buckled in and speeding toward the port.

Garrus shook his head. “You’ll find out where we’re going when we get there. That’s the meaning of surprise.”

Tyrra accepted this with more grace than Shepard would’ve managed at her age, turning to gaze longingly out the window instead of badgering Garrus for more information. Rose tapped her fingertips against the hamster’s cage, initiating a chorus of irritated rodent noises. She chittered back at him.

“Wow,” Tyrra breathed as they rounded the corner and the spaceport docks came into view. “ _Wow_.”

“Wow,” Rose echoed, straining against her seatbelt to peer past Tyrra. “What’s that one called? Mom? What’s that one?”

Shepard leaned over Rose’s shoulder and looked toward the dock, only to see the sleek, elegant lines of a ship she’d have known anywhere, even without the familiar paint job in Alliance colors and the huge black letters of its name emblazoned against the hull.

“Surprise,” Garrus whispered in her ear.

She whirled, eyes wide, and punched Garrus lightly in the shoulder. He gave an exaggerated wince, but his eyes shone. “Tell me you did not comandeer the _Normandy_ for a pleasure cruise.”

“Some strings I _can_ pull.” He tilted his head and his mandibles fluttered in the mix of nerves and cockiness she still found so impossibly endearing. “Besides, there’s a _little_ business involved.”

She couldn’t stop herself from grinning. Or from kissing him. His answering chuckle sounded immensely pleased with itself. “The power’s gone straight to your head, Vakarian.”

“Meep,” meeped Odysseus.

“Are you _crying_ , Mom?” Rose asked. “About a spaceship?”

“Nope,” Shepard said, blinking rapidly to keep herself from being a liar. She slipped her hand into Garrus’ and gave it a squeeze. “Just happy. And excited for you girls to meet her.”


	8. Bunk Beds and Babysitters

Shepard knew it was a special occasion because Joker had bestirred himself enough to get out of his chair. He stood on the other side of the airlock door, smart-ass smirk somewhat at odds with his perfectly turned out uniform. He wasn’t, she noticed with no small amount of surprise, even wearing his baseball cap. Threads of silver Shepard had never noticed before glinted at his temples when he stepped forward to greet them. She wondered if they’d always been there, hidden by his cap, or if they were new.

“Welcome aboard, Councilor, Commande—” Joker stopped, chagrin painting his features. Clearing his throat, he continued, “ _Admiral._ Sorry. Even I know those extra bars count for something.”

Shepard shook her head, chuckling. “Hardly a capital offense. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times during the war even I forgot my given name wasn’t actually _Commander._ ” When he raised his hand, almost as if to salute, she caught it and pressed it between both of hers. “Just Shepard, Joker. You know that.”

“Aye, ma’am,” he replied. “See you’ve brought a couple of new recruits.”

“Make sure to give them the hard jobs,” Garrus said. “Preferably ones that lead to long naps.”

“Mom?” Rose whispered, loudly enough they probably heard her at the other end of the CIC. “Mom, can we see the rest?”

Shepard glanced down at Rose trying so hard—and failing, for the most part—to be patient. Rose practically vibrating with excitement was par for the course—she tended to get enthusiastic about everything from really good sandwiches to new clothes to starships. It took a great deal more to excite Tyrra to the point of losing her cool, but now, holding tight to Rose’s other hand, her eyes could only be described as pleading, and her posture was as unguarded and anticipatory as Shepard had ever seen it.

“Sure thing,” Shepard relented.

Garrus snorted. “You say that like you’re not dying to peer into every corner and personally check every bolt.”

Shepard arched a brow. “You’re telling me you don’t have the _slightest_ inclination to see what horror has been wrought down in the main battery?”

Garrus’ mandibles flared in silent dismay.

“Yeah, that’s about what I thought.” Turning once more to Joker, Shepard said, “We’ll just get settled, then. Have you put us in the crew quarters? I hope you haven’t displaced anyone; we’re happy to take shifts. This is hardly a passenger liner.”

“Uh,” Joker replied.

This was answer enough to produce a glower Shepard sent over her shoulder at Garrus, who was doing an absolutely awful impression of innocence.

“No,” she said.

“I said you’d say that.”

She shook her head sharply. “No way.”

“More than that, _he_ knew you’d say it. And, as far as he’s concerned, it’s still your ship and he’s just keeping her in shape until her rightful captain comes back to claim her.”

“I notice he’s not here to make his case in person.”

Garrus smiled. “Terrible breach in protocol, isn’t it? We could each write him up, if it makes you feel better.”

“Mom, _please._ ” Rose’s curls quivered with barely-contained excitement. Tyrra bobbed up and down on her toes before ruthlessly returning to expectant stillness.

Joker laughed as another pair of porters came in with another load of their ridiculous luggage. Shepard studiously ignored that it was her crate of shoes.

“Speaking of passenger liners. Damn. You guys _moving_ to—”

“Moreau!” Shepard snapped in her best _dressing down the out of line private_ voice. Joker’s teeth clicked audibly as he closed his mouth. “Did you miss the memo? Because I know one was sent. It’s a _surprise._ ”

Tyrra tilted her head, mandibles flicking as if to test the air around her. “I thought the ship was the surprise.”

Garrus brushed his knuckles against the top of her head; Tyrra leaned ever so slightly into the touch. “The ship was part of it,” he said. “Mostly for your mom—for Shepard. The rest is for you. But you’ve got to wait.”

Tyrra accepted this with her usual quiet patience, but Shepard didn’t miss the way her gaze darted down toward the CIC.

Rose tilted her head, face contorted in confusion. “Mom, I was wondering… if you flush the toilet on a spaceship, does your pee just go out in space?”

Shepard looked at Garrus. Garrus’ mandibles trembled. Shepard crouched to look Rose in the eyes. “It may be time to introduce you to Newton and his laws of motion, sweet pea. Is that your way of telling me you need a bathroom?”

“ _Mom_ , no. I _said_ I _need_ to _see_ the _ship_.” Rose wrinkled her nose in annoyance. “You just keep talking and _talking_ , oh my gosh _._ ”

Joker laughed, evidently ignoring the glare Shepard sent his way. “I like you, kid. You come hang out with me on the flight deck any time you want, okay?”

“Does that mean we can see it _now_?” 

“Nah, go see your room first. You’ve got bunk beds. You want to fight your sister for the best one, right? Time-honored sibling tradition.”

Rose’s eyes widened, her rosebud lips parting in an awed ‘o’. “For real? Like really real?”

“One hundred percent real, Cerberus-issued, Alliance-refurbished bunk beds.”

Rose jumped up and down for a moment, overcome with anticipation, before stilling. “D’you want the top one, Tyr?”

Tyrra blinked. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay.” Rose lowered her voice into a real whisper, so quiet Shepard had a hard time hearing it even though she was standing right next to them. “I know you don’t like the feeling of something over your head. ‘Cause of all the stuff that happened.”

Tyrra leaned forward, brushing her forehead briefly against Rose’s, sniffling when she got a noseful of hair. Rose responded with one of her exuberant, full-body, one-hundred-percent-commitment hugs. “Maybe we can share,” Tyrra said. “Or take turns.”

“‘Kay,” Rose said brightly. “But I guess only if we don’t stay in the airlock _for-ev-er_.”

“This is probably one of those parenting moments when I’m supposed to be teaching patience,” Shepard mused, “but really, I _do_ want to see how she’s doing.”

As she turned the corner toward the CIC, Shepard allowed herself a small smile, ever so faintly sad. Nostalgic, perhaps. Not so very long ago, this would have been the start of her rounds. She always did like visiting Joker first, to catch anything that might be wrong at the ship’s nerve center. From there she’d have gone down to the shuttle bay, up through engineering, before making a circuit of the crew deck, ending in the battery. Most of the faces would be unfamiliar now, though. Tours ended, rotations changed. Garrus’ hand settled lightly at her lower back, bringing her back to herself just in time to catch sight of Kaidan Alenko grinning at her as a chorus of shouted “Surprise!”s washed over her.

#

“You’re lucky I didn’t reflexively murder you,” Shepard muttered. “I don’t need armor or weapons to incinerate you, you know.”

“Why do you think we had Joker lull you into a state of calm?” he replied, an entirely-too-amused half-smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Besides, I think Jack’s kids were ready with a barrier.”

“That’s a novel kind of training,” Shepard said. “Scare a jumpy, paranoid, ex-Spectre infiltration expert handy with explosives and try to contain the fallout?”

“Still pretending you’ve retired?”

“I have. You know I have.” 

His noncommittal grunt said more than words could have, and Shepard jabbed him in his unprotected side with a pointy elbow. “Don’t make me actually murder you, Alenko.” She sighed, watching Tyrra and Rose wander around the CIC. They stood near the galaxy map, heads bent together. “It’s fine, this change of pace. Good. I mean. It’s good.”

“Please, Shepard,” Kaidan said. “If you’re going to try and convince me, you’re going to have to do better than that.”

“I can’t go active again right now. There’s the kids to think about. Garrus.”

“Who I’m going to guess would consider murdering _you_ if he heard you using him as an excuse.”

“Who’s getting murdered?” Jack asked, sauntering over, thumbs hooked in the waistband of her pants. “Thought we finished all that shi—crap. Stuff. Ugh. Whatever.”

“No murdering,” Shepard insisted. Taking a step toward Jack, she half-opened her arms before realizing it was _Jack_ , and physical affection wasn’t how she worked.

Jack, though, only rolled her eyes and stepped into Shepard’s arms.

“Motherhood’s made you soft,” Jack said, but her slim arms slipped around Shepard’s back and held just as tight.

“It’s good to see you, too, Jack. You just here for the party, or…?”

“Shit, Shepard, I’m working.” She stepped back just enough to allow her expansive gesture to include the trio of teenage girls hovering near the comm station, watching Tyrra and Rose. “Killing a couple birds with the same stone, really. They get some time on a starship, get to see some new shit, get some training. Mostly babysitting, though.”

Shepard cocked her head. “Babysitting… my kids?”

“Sure as hell not mine.” Jack snorted. “You really didn’t have any idea? Vakarian did manage to pull one over on you. Zaeed’s gonna be _pissed._ ”

Shepard didn’t bother trying to contain the sudden laughter. “What were the odds?”

“Enough to keep me in drinks and nice dinners for a couple months, since I figured if anyone could manage to surprise you, it’d be Garrus. He arranged the whole thing. Your kids are bunking with me and my girls. I’m guessing so he can jump your bones repeatedly, without a pint-sized audience.”

A flush heated Shepard’s cheeks, but Jack just laughed. “I’m not saying he gave _every_ detail about the first time the little one wandered in and caught you, but damn, what he did tell? Said he’d never seen you so pink. Or so speechless. And then, what? You told her you were making sure he didn’t have any injuries. Really, Shepard? _Playing doctor_ was the best explanation you could come up with? That’s kinky shit.”

Shepard buried her face in her hands, mumbling about murder—multiple murders, where no one would ever find the bodies—and Kaidan sighed a very long-suffering sigh.

“Still a stick in the mud, Alenko?” Jack narrowed her eyes, but ruined the glare with a smile. “Good some things never change. Looking forward to keeping you on your toes for the next couple of weeks.”

“Why did I say this was okay?” Kaidan asked no one in particular. “In what universe did I think this was a good idea?”

“Probably the one where you’re not an insufferable killjoy.”

Kaidan only shrugged, but his eyes shone with mirth. “…Playing _doctor_? Really?”

“I hate you both,” Shepard said. “I’m writing you up for insubordination. Really, really gross insubordination.”

“What’s gross, Mom?” Rose asked, appearing as if from nowhere. “Flushing pee into space?”

Jack looked at Kaidan; Kaidan looked back at Jack. Shepard, pleased at the abrupt and welcome change of subject—even if it did have to do with bodily functions—had to hand it to her precious, precocious little chatterbox: she certainly knew how to silence a room.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” Shepard said, scooping Rose into her arms and smiling beatifically over her head at her mute companions. “Let’s go find out what unsuspecting piece of equipment your dad’s already busy calibrating.”

 


	9. Little Sister

Rose squeezed her eyes shut and crossed her ankles, trying—and failing—to convince herself she didn’t really have to go to the bathroom. The room was dim, but not completely dark, and the soft sounds of people sleeping filled the air. They all sounded so warm, and comfortable, and like they didn’t have to pee. Lucky. Even Tyrra was sound asleep, curled up on her side, face half-buried in the fluffy turian pillow they’d brought from home.

When Rose began to inch toward the edge of the bed, Tyrra reached out a sleepy arm and tried to tuck her back close to her side, but Rose slipped away from her grasp. Without opening her eyes, Tyrra murmured, “Y’okay? Bad dream?”

“No,” Rose whispered. “Bathroom.”

“Want me to come?”

“Go back to sleep, Tyr.”

Tyrra snuffled, yawned, and almost immediately began gently snoring again. As quietly as she could, Rose climbed down from their shared top bunk, tiptoeing past her sleeping babysitters. Even Jack was asleep, one brightly-tattooed arm flung over her eyes. Rose wondered what all the patterns meant, and whether she could get some pretty ones, too, when she was bigger. She didn’t stop to stare for too long, though. She didn’t want Jack to wake up and shoo her back to bed, not even if it did mean she might get another good bedtime story. Jack told _really_ good stories, with lots of scary monsters and explosions and magic and not too much kissing.

Even though she liked their house and liked her room and thought she would really miss all her friends at school, she thought it would be pretty great to live on a ship like the _Normandy_. For a while, anyway. They’d wandered all over it with Susie and Nadira and Adisa, like, even in the hold and the ducts and the room with the big gun her dad liked so much. They’d even been allowed to sit in the shuttle and pretend to fly it, which made Tyrra really happy, and she’d been allowed to choose from like, six kinds of rations for dinner (her dad complained about the options he and Tyrra had, ‘cause they only had, like, three, which wasn’t really fair but just made her mom laugh and say, “At least it’s an improvement over generic dextro nutrient paste?”).

Padding down the hall after using the bathroom, Rose decided she might even like the _Normandy_ best during the sleeping time. It was so quiet she could hear all the hums and beeps and noises, almost like the ship was talking to her. But not like a person talking, or even like a computer talking. A different kind, like it was telling her stories about all the places it had gone and all the things it had seen. Good stories. She put her hand against the wall and dragged her fingertips along the smooth panels until she hit the big board with all the names on it.

Earlier, when Rose asked about the names, it made her mom have the sad face. The really sad one, too, not just the _I forgot to get something for dinner_ or _Garrus is away for a week_ or _ugh, I have to do laundry because we’re all out of clean underwear_ sad face. It was the one where she went really, really still and really, really quiet, and her eyes looked kinda distant and empty and weird. Somehow it was sadder than crying, when her eyes did that thing. It only happened when someone mentioned the war, and all the bad stuff that happened then. It always made Rose kinda scared, like maybe her mom wasn’t going to come back from that faraway place and then she and Tyrra would have to find some other mom. Rose didn’t ever want to find a different mom. Not when she’d been so lucky having two really good ones.

Just when Rose was getting really scared that her mom was broken and it was somehow all her fault for asking about the name wall, her dad did the thing where he slung an arm over her mom’s shoulders and whispered something Rose couldn’t hear. It made the sad face go away. Made her actually laugh. Sometimes Rose thought maybe her dad was a little bit magic, at least when it came to cheering people up. He was really, really good at it. She should tell Jack to put him in one of her stories sometime. He’d fit right in.

Rose crossed through the big room with the star map, stopping to look up at it again. She and Tyrra spent a really long time just sitting on the railing, kicking their legs and letting Susie and Nadira and Adisa tell them about stars and planets and relays. Uncle Kaidan (she couldn’t remember if he was a captain or a commander or a major or _something_ , and besides, he’d just been Uncle Kaidan since she first met him, so it was weird to change it now) promised he’d show her how it worked, and maybe even let her set a course if she was really good and didn’t get up to _too_ much trouble.

Rose hoped wandering around the ship in her pajamas didn’t count as trouble.

When she finally made it to the cockpit, the pilot’s chair swiveled around even though she thought she was being really quiet. Joker (he said he didn’t want to be _Uncle_ Joker, because it made him feel old; Mom said, “Well, if the cap fits…”) was back to wearing his hat now, and he smiled at her from beneath it instead of immediately scolding her and sending her back to bed. “Hey, kid. Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?”

“I had to pee.”

He made a face, like she’d said something really gross. “Well, don’t do that in here.”

“Ew,” she squealed, giggling, edging forward a couple more steps, until she was almost beside the arm of his chair. “I already went. In the _toilet._ I’m not a baby.”

“‘Course not.” He gestured at her pajamas and winked. “Clearly you’re on duty. Footie uniforms are all the rage. Wish I had one.”

“You could probly ask my mom. She’s the one who bought ‘em for me. Tyr has different ones, with dinosaurs on them, but hers don’t have feet, so she has to wear slippers.”

“Your mom,” Joker echoed, shaking his head. “Yeah. Nope. That’s still weird.”

“‘Cause she’s a big hero and stuff?” Rose tilted her head. “She’s actually pretty normal, y’know.”

“You got a skewed picture of normal, kid, if she’s falling under the bar you’re setting.”

Rose shrugged. “I dunno. I like your hat.”

“Interesting non sequitur,” he said, but he reached up and tugged off the cap, dropping it onto her head. She pulled it lower, jamming it over her curls. “You gonna take the co-pilot’s chair or what?”

She grinned at him, bouncing on her pajamaed toes. “For really?”

“Ship’s not going to fly herself.”

Rose bounded over to the chair, climbing into it and staring out the windows at the millions and billions of stars. It didn’t even feel like they were moving, but the light outside flickered blue in pretty waves, and the stars shimmered and danced. 

“So,” he said, in that funny voice adults always seemed to get when they were gonna ask a hard question, “you guys holding up okay? Settling in?”

“Um, yeah? Like, we have our own rooms and sometimes we make forts and there was this boy at school who was bugging me _all_ the time, but he stopped and now we’re kinda friends. So it’s pretty good.” She pulled one of her curls straight—her hair was _really_ long when she did that—and then let it go. It bounced back and smacked her in the nose. “Tyr’s still getting used to it more than me, like, she doesn’t call them Mom and Dad yet? But I think she’s still pretty happy. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

Joker didn’t say anything, and when Rose turned away from the stars to look over her shoulder at him, she saw he was staring down at his hands and his sad face was almost as bad as her mom’s sad face. Her own eyes filled with tears, and she scrambled out of the co-pilot’s chair, her feet skidding on the smooth floor. She hit her belly hard against the arm of his chair, breath punching out of her in a gasp. “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

“You and your non sequiturs, kid.” His voice was low and rough, but he almost smiled as he turned his head. “I had a little sister. She didn’t make it. You know. The war.”

“The stupid war,” Rose agreed, hesitating just a second before standing on her tiptoes and patting his head gently, smoothing the hair still standing up from when he’d given her his hat, the way her mom—the way both her moms—always did when she was sad or scared. “I bet she was nice.”

“She was,” Joker said. “You remind me of her, a bit. Especially when she was small. Way too much energy. Way too many questions. Always getting herself into trouble.”

“I do _not_ always get into trouble.”

“Yeah, that’s what Hilary used to say, too. Usually when we caught her red-handed.” Joker shook his head. He still looked sad, but not as bad. “She used to take all these crazy risks, you know, climbing anything and everything, standing up to kids twice her age and three times her weight, like she wanted to do things twice as hard because my breakable bones wouldn’t let me do any of it. She wanted to be a pilot, too. Never got the chance. She would’ve been good.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “Not as good as I am. But close, maybe.”

“I can be your little sister,” Rose said. His eyes widened, and she blurted, “Not if you don’t wanna. It’s just, you know, Tyrra’s my sister and we’re totally different. My mom—I mean Shepard, not my other mom—she says sometimes we get to choose our families. And it doesn’t mean we forget the other people or stop loving them or anything, we just get to love _more_ people.”

“Yeah,” Joker said softly, almost not to her at all, “Shepard’s definitely your mom.”

“You can even have two sisters if you want. I mean, probly. ‘Specially if you show Tyrra how to fly. She really wants to but she’s too shy to ask.” Rose was about to say something more, but instead she just yawned. “I gotta go back to sleep soon.”

“You do that,” Joker said. She tried to give him his cap back, but he waved it off.

“Keep it,” he said. “You and Tyrra come hang out with me tomorrow for a bit. See if I can’t show you the ropes. It’s the least a big brother can do, right?”

Rose’s laughter disappeared behind the force of another yawn. Yeah. She liked the _Normandy_ a lot during the sleeping time. Next time she’d bring Tyrra. And maybe they’d find her a hat, too.

 


	10. Unexpected

Shepard leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, smiling as she watched her children play with Jack and her charges. The mother in her balked every time Rose flung herself off a top bunk, while the soldier appreciated the precision with which Jack’s biotic fields kept her daughter from breaking her head open. The Jack she’d first met wouldn’t have been able to manage it. She’d been all brute force and explosions, and this was a master’s skill. The biotic field dissipated, and Rose’s feet touched the ground without even a stumble. 

Even the mother part of Shepard couldn’t help feeling a little proud of Rose’s fearlessness, though, and the effortless trust she exuded. Even after all she’d been through, even after all she’d suffered, Rose flung herself headlong into trust, heart on her sleeve, every emotion worn on her little face without artifice. Tyrra had a harder time of it, Shepard knew. She’d seen more, seen worse, and had been old enough to remember. Shepard saw the hesitation in her sometimes, the fear, but it wasn’t crippling. Not yet. Not ever, if she had her way.

With a pang of dismay and old hurt, Shepard dreaded what it might take to steal that innocence, and every protective instinct rose up with a fury, sending her hands into clenched fists and twisting her mouth into a snarl. A deep breath calmed her, another let her push the rage away. There would be no Mindoir for Rose and Tyrra, not if she and Garrus had any say. No raiders in the night, no fire and death, no broken-hearted girls crying alone into fine pillows on a fine bed in an unloving and manipulative house far from anything close to home. Shaking her head, Shepard tucked these thoughts away, burying them just as her tactical cloak’s duration expired.

Tyrra was the first to notice Shepard’s sudden appearance. Her mandibles flared wide in a grin, and she bounded over, eyes alight. “Did you see?” Tyrra asked. “Did you see us flying? I _love_ flying!”

Jack had the grace to look _almost_ chagrined, but Shepard only smiled, reaching out to run gentle fingers along Tyrra’s brow. The trip had been good for Tyrra; she’d done well left to explore the _Normandy_ , and interacted voluntarily with more people more often. Tyrra leaned into Shepard’s touch and even flung and arm about her waist in a brief hug. Tamping down on the mother’s worry, the soldier’s anger at past wrongs, Shepard replied, “I did. You have particularly nice form, sweetheart. Rose launches herself like a cannonball.”

“I like being a cannonball!” Rose declared, sliding her hand into Tyrra’s and leaning her cheek against her sister’s arm. Again, so effortless. Tyrra smiled down at her. “I knocked Nadira right over. By mistake, though. Auntie Jack caught us.”

It happened too quickly; Shepard couldn’t swallow the little laugh that bubbled up. “Auntie now, is it?”

Shepard arched a brow, and was met by a much more characteristic glower from Jack, and an unvoiced but very clear _fuck you_ mouthed with perfect enunciation _._  

“Yup,” Rose said, catching none of this. “Auntie Jack, ‘cause she said you were like family, so that makes us all like family, right?”

Jack rolled her eyes. “You have a big mouth, squirt.”

Rose stretched her mouth as wide as it could go and then laughed. “It’s not that big. Tyrra’s is bigger, ‘cause turian mouths are different. See?”

“She didn’t mean it like that, Rosie,” Tyrra explained, with the particular kind of supernatural patience she always managed for her sister. “She meant you repeat everything you say, even when you shouldn’t.”

“Really?” Rose asked. “I didn’t say anything bad or tell any secrets or anything. Isn’t a good thing to know your family is even bigger than you think it is?”

“It’s a very good thing,” Shepard said. “Auntie Jack just likes to pretend she’s a badass impervious to feelings, and you just burst the bubble a bit.”

“Mom, I don’t think you’re s’posed to say badass,” Rose whispered. “It’s kinda a bad word.”

“Yeah,” Jack echoed, smirking. “It’s kinda a bad word, Mom.”

Shepard returned the rolled eyes, but tempered the gesture with another smile. “You’re right. Five credits for the swear jar.”

“Auntie Jack owes five hundred and sixty five credits,” Tyrra said, speaking the word _auntie_ with an ease she had yet to display with anything resembling _mother._ Shepard didn’t let her disappointed sigh escape. Perhaps if _she’d_ stuck with _aunt_ as an appellation, Tyrra wouldn’t have balked quite so hard. _In her own time_ , Garrus’ voice admonished from somewhere in the back of Shepard’s head, and she nodded a kind of silent acknowledgement. _In her own time._

“Your sister’s right,” Jack muttered. “You do have a big turian mouth. Can’t imagine where you lot get it from.”

“Garrus,” Shepard said at once. “Obviously. I am the soul of discretion.”

“Unless you’ve fallen face-first in a vat of Ryncol.”

“What’s Ryncol?” Rose asked. “Is it yummy?”

“I think it’s alcohol,” Tyrra said. “Or maybe poison.”

“Both,” Jack and Shepard groaned at the same time, earning titters of delighted laughter from the girls. Shepard ruffled Rose’s curls and added, “You two need to head down to the Kodiak, okay?”

“Is this for the surprise?” Tyrra asked, bouncing a little on her toes.

“It is for the surprise,” Shepard said. “And no, I’m still not telling you what it is.”

The girls ran for the door, but before Shepard could follow, Jack’s hand shot out and her fingers tightened around Shepard’s wrist. “Hey, can I get a minute?”

“Sure,” Shepard said, brow furrowing. Jack’s expression gave little away, but something in the line of her shoulders said the conversation was a serious one. “Girls, tell Garrus I’ll be right down. Don’t leave without me.”

“We would never,” Tyrra said.

Rose added, “Unless you took a really, really long time. Like five whole minutes.”

“Taskmasters, the lot of you.” Shepard’s amusement dropped the moment the door slid shut behind the giggling girls. “Something wrong, Jack?”

“Yeah,” she said, running a hand back along her hair and then giving her head a shake. Shepard blinked as Jack lifted her eyes. The anger in them was unmistakable. “Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but you’ve got to get her fitted sooner rather than later. You’re not doing her any favors putting it off.”

“Not doing… what?”

“Come on, Shepard, don’t play dumb. It doesn’t suit you. Look, you gotta know I’ll have your back on this. Alenko, too. Liara, if she’ll pull herself away from her screens. Samara, maybe. Fuck, you’ve got a whole squad of us, and it’s the least we can do. But putting your head in the sand’s never been your style. Sorry I have to be the one to call you on it, but the mom thing’s got you off your game.”

 Shepard swallowed past the knot of emotion lodged in her throat—uncertain if it was composed of fear or anger or confusion or all of them—and said very slowly, very carefully, “Jack. I do not have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

Jack tilted her head like a puppy hearing a distant door opening. “You’re not even fucking with me, are you?”

“I am not.”

“Shit.” Jack released Shepard’s wrist and took a step backward, almost graceless. “Well. Fuck. Didn’t Chakwas notice? Maybe… fuck, hell if I know how this shit works. I guess kids like Alenko came to it later than little powerhouse baby me, right? Maybe it’s brand fucking new. Maybe it just lit up.” She sighed, but at least the anger was gone from her eyes. “Rose, Shepard. She’s got biotics. Not crazy strong, but she definitely needs an amp. And she needs to learn to control it. We both know what happens when that shit goes wild.”

“Oh,” Shepard said. She reached for different words, different questions, but they all slid away, slippery and strange. “You’re not—you’re not fucking with _me_ , are you?”

Jack shook her head. “You know I wouldn’t. Not about shit like this.”

Shepard echoed the head shake, and then followed it with a nod. Lifting her hands, she scrubbed her fingers back through her hair and held onto the crown of her head for a moment. “Well. That’s unexpected.”

Jack paced to one of the bunk beds, lifting a small stuffed rabbit Rose never went without. “Unexpected like it changes things? Unexpected like you don’t want to deal—”

“No,” Shepard said, half a snarl audible even to her own ears. “Like she said, we’re all a big family now, right? When have you known me to give up on my family? I sure as hell never gave up on you.”

For a moment, the ghost of the girl from Pragia fluttered across Jack’s features, old wounds and deep pain, and she looked young. Terribly young. Terribly sad. Even terribly scared. Shepard crossed to Jack’s side and dropped a gentle hand to her shoulder. Jack didn’t even pull away. Jack said, “Sometimes when people say ‘unexpected’ they mean ‘too hard’ and they—well. You know.”

“Yeah, well, I fought Reapers on foot. A kid who can blow things up with her mind is barely a blip on the radar.” Shepard gave Jack’s shoulder a brief squeeze. “I mean, I should’ve seen it coming, right? Rose is already a force of nature in the destruction of personal property department. This just gives her another angle to work. She’ll probably be thrilled. And I’ll just have to invest in better display cases for things I don’t want broken.”

Jack didn’t reply at once, but her gaze never left Shepard’s face. After a few long, silent moments, she said, “You actually mean that, don’t you? Fuck, Shepard. You really are a fucking girl scout. You make the whole caring and accepting thing look so damned easy.”

“Rose’s got a veritable host of biotically-gifted pseudo aunts and uncles. You always did give me crap for not taking you on enough ground missions. Now’s your time to shine.”

“Bitch.”

“Says Auntie Jack. You love it.”

Jack snorted—mostly, Shepard thought, to cover a laugh. 

“They’re good kids, Shepard. Real good kids.” Jack rolled her shoulders, settling her weight on one hip. The little girl grief was gone again, almost as though it had never been. “If I’ve got to be someone’s aunt, I don’t mind it being them. Probably means I have to keep track of things like fucking birthdays and Christmas.”

“And your abuse of the word _fucking_ ,” Shepard agreed. “That’s at least seventy more credits for the swear jar. Might even want to round it up to a hundred to be safe.”

“Fuck you,” Jack said, but fondly.

 


	11. Hide-and-Seek

Tyrra couldn’t have said why she froze at the entrance of the shuttle bay, but she did. Maybe someone said something they shouldn’t have. Maybe she just  _knew_. Because it didn’t make sense, otherwise. She and Rose had already played a lot in the shuttle bay. Tyrra knew all the ins and outs and best hiding spots. Rose ran ahead, obviously unaffected, her red curls bobbing through the crowd of people. But Tyrra took one step out of the elevator, and some paralyzing  _thing_  just crashed down on her—

_Rose’s mama under the wall. Rose with blood on her face, trying to bring back her mama with medi-gel, but it’s not working, of course it’s not working. Rose’s mama’s eyes, empty and staring. They aren't green like Rose’s. They're clear and amber-brown. She has Rose’s red hair, though, and Rose’s freckles, and Rose’s nose. Sometimes Tyrra thinks: this is what Rose will look like when she dies. This is what will happen when—_

“You okay, sweetheart? We’re just about ready to go.”

Tyrra heard Shepard’s voice, but couldn’t reply. Her throat was all tight, tight like a fist was clamped around it. Like the thing that grabbed  _her_  mama, grabbed her tight and held her up in the air like she was a toy, just a toy to shake around. A thin, reedy whine escaped Tyrra’s closed-up throat.

She couldn’t move, just like she hadn’t been able to move then. And no one seemed to notice. The shuttle bay bustled around her, filled with bodies all moving from place to place like insects. Maybe that was how they’d all seemed to the Reapers. Just bugs. Things to be squashed, things you didn’t even think twice about killing. 

Shepard came around from behind her, dropping to her knees. Her eyes were green, but not the same green as Rose’s. Her hair was red, but darker, and not curly. She didn’t have freckles, and her nose was straight instead of turned up at the end. She still looked way more like Rose’s mom than she could ever look like Tyrra’s, and sometimes that made Tyrra’s stomach clench with envy so hard and sharp it hurt.

Tyrra knew what scared looked like on human faces almost as well as she knew the shape of fear on a turian’s. Shepard’s fear was pushed down eyebrows and pushed together lips and something wet and haunted in her eyes. “Tyrra. It’s Shepard. You’re on the  _Normandy_. You’re safe. Everything is safe.”

Tyrra couldn’t even shake her head, but she wanted to. Nothing was safe. She’d gotten too comfortable. Something bad was going to happen, because she wasn’t paying attention all the time like she was supposed to. Sleeping inside wasn’t safe, because buildings fell down all the time. Sleeping outside wasn’t safe, because of all the different kinds of Reaper creatures. She kept looking too hard at the turian ones, afraid she’d see eyes she knew, or familiar fringe.

 _They’re not turian anymore,_  her mama had whispered after she shot three, right between their turian eyes. Her mama was good with guns. So was her dad, but he—

 _If they’re not turian, why is your voice shaking?_  Tyrra had wanted to ask.  _If they’re not turian, why are you keening and keening and keening in your sleep?_

She hadn’t asked, and then her mama died and Tyrra found herself looking for her mama’s eyes or her mama’s fringe every time she saw one of the turian Reapers. Her mama died, and then Tyrra took over keening and keening in her sleep.

Someone called Shepard’s name, but she didn’t look away from Tyrra. She just snapped a gesture with her hand, swift and sharp and inarguably a command. Tyrra wondered what it meant, wondered what it must be like to be strong and brave and to have everyone do exactly what you told them. If Bryn and Kital and Marina had done just what Tyrra told them, maybe they’d be here, too. The  _Normandy_  had lots of room. 

Shepard didn’t touch her, but she didn’t move away, either. Didn’t give up on her the way Tyrra kept expecting. Tyrra wasn’t sweet like Rose, didn’t laugh as much, couldn’t  _forget_ things and just be  _happy._  She wanted to. She wanted to so bad it kept her up at night, wanted to so bad she could taste it like sour vinnak sprinkled on all of her food. And when she  _did_ laugh, when she  _did_  forget, she felt twice as sick when all the memories came crashing back. All those dead eyes. All that blood. All the people she couldn’t save, no matter how hard she tried, no matter how careful she was.

The elevator opened behind her. Someone started to complain, but Shepard lifted her eyes and the voice choked on its words and just  _stopped_. “Tyrra,” she said, “think you can manage a few steps over this way? I don’t want anyone to trip over you.”

Tyrra told her legs to move, but they didn’t. Her arm jerked up, though, straight out like it wasn’t even part of her body anymore, and Shepard curled her fingers around Tyrra’s hand. Human skin was so soft, human hands so baffling with all their fingers. When Shepard took a step, still holding Tyrra’s hand, Tyrra’s legs gave in and followed, until they stood in an almost-quiet corner. Shepard dropped back down into a crouch, but didn’t let go of Tyrra’s hand. 

It seemed like a hundred thousand years ago Tyrra had been flying off the top bunk, caught and cushioned by Auntie Jack’s biotics. She curled her free hand into a fist and hit herself hard on the thigh. Games were for  _babies_. And babies didn’t survive, not anymore. She had to be  _big._  She had to be  _grown up._  Or she’d see Rose with dead, staring eyes. She’d see more broken bodies, more blood, more—

“Are you getting rid of me?” Tyrra said, words all tumbled together like rocks sliding down a mountain. “Because I can try harder. I can—I can definitely try harder—”

“Hey,” Shepard said, the wetness in her eyes getting even wetter, her lips so pressed together they almost disappeared. “Did someone say something like that to you?”

Tyrra shook her head. Then nodded. Then bent her neck and stared hard at the floor between her feet. “Are you taking me back to Palaven? Someone said Cipritine. I don’t think they knew Rose and I were here.”

Shepard sat back hard on her heels, breath gasping out like she’d been punched. “Oh, sweetheart. No. Not… not like that. I didn’t even think—it was supposed to be a surprise.”

“Taking me back to the place where everyone I ever knew  _died_?” Tyrra couldn’t stop the shrill cry of her subharmonics, wasn’t sure she wanted to, even if she could. “Everything was  _burning_. My house and my school and my  _dad._  I had a little sister, did you know that? I had a little sister and my dad went inside to get her while my mom and I waited in the car and the big Reaper ship  _screamed_ , it screamed so loud and then I didn’t  _have_  a house. Or a dad. Or a sister.”

She wrenched her hand out of Shepard’s and then reached forward with both and pushed. Hard. Shepard didn’t even try to stop her. She just fell down, sprawled out and as graceless as Tyrra had ever seen her. “You’re… of course you’re right. Oh, Tyrra. I’m so sorry. I am so, so sorry. You don’t have to go. Of course you don’t.”

Rose’s shriek of happiness reached Tyrra even from across the shuttle bay. She probably  _wanted_  to go to Palaven, wanted to see new places, wanted to look around with her big eyes and her open heart. Tyrra clutched at the edge of her cowl, right by her throat, holding on like it was a rope to keep her from falling. Shepard didn’t get up. She just sat straight and crossed her legs in that weird human way Tyrra’s joints couldn’t duplicate. After a moment, Shepard patted the floor next to her. Tyrra scowled and thought about running away, but sat instead.

“I told you a little bit about my parents,” Shepard said, very quietly. Tyrra didn’t want to know what her subvocals would’ve been saying if she’d had them. Even her flat voice held too much and made Tyrra’s plates itch. “We lived on Mindoir. Back then, it was still pretty small, so I pretty much knew everyone in our settlement. Batarian raiders came. They… they burned everything, too.”

“How did you get away? Did your mama protect you? Like mine?”

Shepard shook her head. “I don’t know what happened to her. Not exactly. I… never saw, and if anyone else knew, they never told me. I hope she didn’t—I hope—I saw my dad, though. He tried to fight. He wasn’t a soldier. So they killed him.”

“But everyone’s a little bit of a soldier. They all go to boot camp before they figure out what they’re going to do when they’re grownups.”

“Humans do things a bit differently,” Shepard explained. “No mandatory service. My dad hated guns. So did my mom. They built things up. They fixed things, and grew things. I sometimes think—well. It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“But if they went to boot camp, they could’ve fought back.”

“They did. In their own way.”

“They could’ve not  _died_.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Soldiers die all the time.” 

Tyrra tapped the tips of her talons against the floor. “So what did you do?”

“I ran away,” Shepard said. “I climbed up a tree.” She showed Tyrra the back of her hand. “I used to have a scar here, from where I bit myself to keep from crying. I could hear people screaming, you know, up there in my tree. I could smell the smoke. But I didn’t climb down. Didn’t try to save them.”

“But you’re… you’re a  _hero_. You’re  _Commander Shepard._ ”

“Not then. I was a scared girl in a tree with blood in her mouth and no weapon but a screwdriver.”

Tyrra tilted her head. “That’s not a good weapon.”

“Tell me about it. Luckily I didn’t have to use it.” She leaned back against the bulkhead and folded her hands in her lap. “I went back once. After. Years after. And it was awful. Everything was different. They’d rebuilt, but nothing looked the way I remembered it. And all the people were strangers. I kept searching every face for something familiar, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. So I… I think I understand why you don’t want to go back. I’ll talk to Garrus. He can get his family to come up here for a visit.”

“His family?” Tyrra echoed. “Like, his mom and dad?”

Shepard smiled, but it was sad. Tyrra knew that much. “Not his mom. His dad, though. And his sister. I think you’ll like them. I know they’re really excited to meet you.”

“And we’re going to their house? Not just… walking around?”

“You don’t have to go, Tyrra. I mean that. I want what’s best for you.”

Tyrra sat back against the bulkhead, too, her feet out straight in front of her. “What if we just go  _there_? To their house. Maybe that’s okay.”

“We can do that.” Shepard leaned down, pressing a quick kiss to the top of Tyrra’s head. Human lips were even weirder than human hands, but Tyrra didn’t mind so much. They were soft, too. “And if you want to come back here, we can. Day or night. You don’t have to give me a reason. Just tell me, okay?”

Tyrra nodded. Slowly, very slowly, she reached out and took Shepard’s hand again. Shepard squeezed back, and they sat side by side in comfortable silence until Rose found them and told them it was time to stop playing hide-and-seek.

“You’re right, Rosie,” Tyrra said. “Time to stop hiding.”

“Well, yeah,” Rose replied, cocking her head and planting her little fists on her hips. “I already found you. That’s how the game works, Tyr. Come on! We get to go in the cockpit if we want. Dad said so! For the  _whole time._ ”

Just before they all reached the shuttle, Tyrra reached out and wrapped her arms around her wriggling sister. “I’m glad you found me, Rosie.”

“Oh, Tyrra,” Rose said. “I’ll always find you. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Tyrra said, mandibles fluttering into a smile she didn’t feel guilty for smiling. “I guess I do.”


	12. A Bit of Advice

One of his aides was rattling off a list of responsibilities and expectations for the visit, while Garrus nodded and ignored him completely. When Shepard touched his elbow lightly, he raised a hand, silencing the exuberant aide. “Send it to my omni-tool and I’ll see what I can do,” he said. Veltus blinked three times, as though astonished anything in the galaxy could be more important than the to do list he carried, but when Garrus gave his head a meaningful—and insistent—tilt, he scrambled off like a fire’d been lit roughly in the vicinity of his rear.

“How many times a day do you say that same phrase?” Shepard murmured, voice pitched for him alone. The curve of her smile said she knew damned well how little he’d been paying attention.

He snorted softly. “More than I care to think about.”

“And do you ever check your omni-tool afterward?”

His mandibles flicked into a grin. “Not that account.” The mirth, however, faded almost at once. “I appreciate the distraction, but you’ve got something else on your mind.”

She nodded, rocking back onto her heels with her hands folded behind her back like she’d always done when giving Admiral Hackett a report she was sure he wouldn’t like. “Tyrra’s not up for the usual three-ring circus. How hard is it going to be to rearrange the schedule so we get to your family first? I think…” She paused, frowning. “She needs some time. To adjust.”

Garrus tipped his head skyward, as if the ceiling of the _Normandy_ ’s cargo bay held the answer. It didn’t. “Then we do what we need to do,” he said as calmly and easily as a man who wasn’t about to upend weeks of planning in one fell swoop.

“Thank you,” Shepard said. “Poor Veltus is going to have a breakdown.”

“Don’t suppose you want to be the one to tell him?”

Shepard pushed herself onto her toes and kissed his scarred mandible. “Not on your life, Vakarian. I don’t have a death wish.”

#

Like Tyrra, it was Garrus’ first trip back to Palaven since the war. His responsibilities to the Council took up a great deal of time; travel between Earth and Palaven was no small endeavor; he hadn’t wanted to leave the girls until they were well-settled; the time was never right.

Mostly, they were excuses. He knew it. Shepard knew it. Even Primarch Victus knew it, though he never pushed. Garrus suspected it had been no easier for Adrien to return, to walk amongst the ashes of their civilization, to see firsthand—to smell, to taste on the air, to hear in the subharmonics of turians too stoic to voice their grief—what always seemed so distant on the vids.

Sometimes when he woke gasping in the night, reaching for the warmth of Shepard beside him, it was because he still saw the cataclysm of Cipritine burning behind his eyelids. Shepard always knew. Just as Shepard had known what it meant when he set his shoulders and said, “I think it’s time.”

He didn’t sit with the girls in the cockpit as they descended; he heard Rose laughing, and Tyrra speaking quietly, though he couldn’t make out her words. He suspected she was pointing things out, putting on a brave face for her sister. Beside him, Shepard stared straight ahead, wearing the necessary environmental suit with the same easy grace she’d always worn armor. She could have worn her old armor if she’d liked; its protection against radiation and environmental hazards was superior even to the top of the line suit she wore now, but she’d shrugged this off and smiled so faintly he knew she was wrestling with things she didn’t yet want to discuss. The environmental suit was not black, had no red and white stripes on the arm, no N7 painted on the chest.

“No point living in the past,” she’d said. “And Rosie’ll be in a suit. Better if I match her.”

Like his avoidance of Palaven, this, too, rang of excuses. And because she didn’t push him, he didn’t push her, either.

#

Along with so much of Cipritine—buildings and parks and homes and the irreplaceable evidence of a civilization thousands upon thousands of years old—Garrus’ old house had burned. The new one was farther outside the city’s limits, farther from its neighbors, nearer the mountains. The floor plan was similar enough to be confusing. Garrus kept expecting the kitchen when what he got was an office, and the door to the garden was where the door to his parents’ room had been. Even now, stepping into the shadows of the greenhouse trees, he almost expected to see a room filled with medical equipment and a dying woman who wouldn’t remember him.

A patch of kiris had been trampled underfoot, doubtless by the children playing tag or hide and seek or Spectre Wars (a game of their own devising), and the sweet scent caught at him and twisted. _They die beautifully,_ his mother had said once. _So unassuming in life, they make perfume like no other when their lives are sacrificed._

Garrus bent, undoing some of the damage done by small feet, and rose with his hands smelling of his mother’s favorite perfume.

“They always remind me of her, too, the flowers,” said his father at his shoulder, and Garrus jumped, embarrassingly startled. Three years ago, no one would’ve been able to approach him like that; his senses had been honed to terrifying sharpness, then, terrifying paranoia, and he’d expected death around every corner.

Strange, how rarely he thought about dying now.

The laughter of the children was followed by Shepard’s voice raised in a comical roar of pain. Definitely Spectre Wars, then.

“They’re good girls,” his father continued. “Niva would have doted on them. I am—it is more difficult for me. That emotion. As perhaps you well know.”

“Dad,” Garrus said, “you’re doing fine. Hell, we’re all learning as we go, here.”

His father’s subharmonics thrummed a brief sound of dissent. “I spent too long living in the minds of murderers, of thieves, of the evil. Even now, I understand them better than I understand my own children, than I understood my own wife. Too often love was a weakness others exploited. I stayed too long in that world.”

Tyrra raced up the rolling hill, jumped, and caught a low-hanging, overripe velara fruit.

“No fair!” Rose squealed. “You know I can’t eat those!”

Tyrra grinned. “Who said I was going to eat it?” A moment later, her accurate arm propelled the gooey fruit at her sister, who took the projectile square in the chest. Rose fell over, overacting her death by velara fruit with such exaggerated melodrama Garrus had to laugh. When Rose was finished very, very, _very_ slowly dying, Tyrra offered a hand to help resurrect her.

“How old is she now? Tyrra?”

“Ten. Or she will be, shortly.”

“Have you spoken to her about markings?”

Garrus blinked at him. “She’s so young.”

His father’s mandibles flicked. “You had yours two years by the time you were her age. She may—she may be waiting for you to bring the subject up. Or she may be afraid to ask. Will she go to boot camp at fifteen? Will she serve the Hierarchy until she’s thirty? How turian will she be, Garrus? Perhaps even she does not know. She may even be afraid to _want._ ”

Garrus bristled, caught in the same old trap, fearing his father’s criticism and wondering if it was valid, all in the same complicated breath.

“We live in a new galaxy, son. Things won’t be as they were. We keep what serves us and let go that which does not. Is that not what nine-tenths of your role has become? And your wife’s, for all she’s not placed quite so visibly as you are, these days?”

Garrus hadn’t ever thought about it in those terms, precisely, but his father was not wrong. He swallowed the protest that had been rising on his tongue and nodded. “It is.”

“Your children are a bridge, whether you want them to be or not. Every decision you make with their rearing will be noted, dissected, commented upon; it will be emulated; it will be criticized. Surely you’ve seen some of this already. Pretending it is not so will not change the reality of it. If you break with tradition, some will rejoice and some will protest, but it will never be a decision made for your family alone.”

“No pressure,” Garrus remarked with forced mildness.

His father chuckled.

“Dad!” shouted Tyrra. “Come play with us! We’re winning!”

“It’s because I don’t have you at my six,” Shepard added. “Shepard without Vakarian is hopeless.”

“Aren’t we all Shepards and Vakarians all together?” Rose asked, brushing the worst of the fruit destruction from her environmental suit. “I mean, we are, right?”

“Go,” his father said. “Your sister and Naxus will be home shortly, annoyed at having missed your arrival.” He settled a hand on Garrus’ shoulder and squeezed lightly. “If you’ll accept a bit of advice from an old man looking backward at his own life, take the moments you have. Steal more, if you can. There are never enough. You do not want to be an old man looking backward at your own life, wishing you’d spent more time playing in the garden with your family and less time working. Trust me.”

“Grandpa,” Rose said, “you come too! You can be on me and Tyrra’s team. We always win.”

Garrus felt his father tense at this side, preparing to demur, to deflect. To depart. “If you’ll accept a bit of advice from a young man who just got a solid piece of advice from his not-as-old-as-he-makes-out-to-be dad—take the moments you have. You’re not living in the minds of murderers now.” Garrus tilted his head in the slightest of challenges; a dare. “Besides, they really do always win.”

“Indeed,” his father said. “Then this time it shall be a rout for the history books.”


	13. Cool Aunt

After three hours spent as sole caregiver to her brother’s daughters, Solana was beginning to have serious doubts about her own suitability as a parent, which made her current state of impending motherhood all the more terrifying. No going back now. Not even if she _was_ having sudden visions of just how woefully underprepared she was. And she was. In vivid color.

Taking the girls off their parents’ hands for a day had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Step one to reaching coveted _cool aunt_ status. Girls day out. Or in. Something. Fun. Definitely fun.

To be honest, she hadn’t actually thought that far ahead when she made the offer.

Garrus had an itinerary of political obligations as long as his arm, which only made Solana shudder and wonder how she could ensure her own position in the Hierarchy rose no further than it was already. Though Shepard had been perfectly willing to stay and entertain the children, Garrus did not disguise how much he wanted her with him. More than that, Solana knew they were far more effective a team when working together, especially when it came to fighting for things they believed in. Solana wasn’t privy to the details, but whatever it was they were dealing with now left a grim expression on her brother’s face whenever he thought no one was looking. Shepard’s wasn’t much better.

While arguing with one or the other of them was possible, when they presented a unified front, Sol wasn’t sure they’d ever actually failed. Being on kid-duty for a day seemed a small price to pay, if it helped relieve some of the tension lurking beneath her brother’s plates or in the furrowed cant of Shepard’s human brows.

Off they’d gone, and with them Naxus and her father to their respective work, leaving Solana in possession of two sleepy girls and many hours to fill. The sleepiness had worn off after breakfast, replaced by the kind of frenetic activity Solana usually associated with a firefight. Or stims. Or stims _during_ a firefight.

And that was only hour _one._

On hour four, tired to her bones and having exhausted all avenues of entertainment via vid-watching or reading or playing in the garden with nothing resembling nap time in sight, Solana bundled the girls into her skycar and took the scenic route into town. This served the dual purpose of helping pass time and avoiding some of the worst areas of Reaper destruction still in the process of being cleaned up. She didn’t need to ask to know Tyrra was uneasy; the girl sat in the back seat with her hands folded, looking anywhere but out the windows. Beside her sister, hip pressed to hip and shoulder to shoulder, Rose kept up a steady stream of conversation requiring no responses. Most of it seemed to be about some vid series Solana had never heard of.

With sinking certainty, Solana realized she was going to have to know these things at some point. Hot vids, and the names of the characters in them. The right toys. _Lingo._

How to change a dirty baby. How to feed one. How to stop one from crying.

“Spirits,” she muttered under her breath.

“Are you okay, Auntie Sol?”

“Of course,” she lied, wondering about the stats on new parents who somehow broke their offspring in the first week. Or day. Or hour. She wondered if there was a record. She wondered if she was going to break it.

Machines she could do. Code? Without a doubt. Even the trickiest, most finicky wiring? Not a problem.

Real living creatures were a whole other matter.

There was, after all, a reason why she’d never kept pets.

“It’s just you have a real funny look, like the one Dad gets when he’s gotta go on the vids.”

“He _hates_ the vids,” Tyrra added. Solana didn’t miss the way the girl’s subharmonics seemed to ask if Solana hated _them_ the way Garrus hated public appearances.

With a touch more honesty than she was entirely comfortable with—and how honest _were_ you supposed to be with children about things like this, anyway?—Solana replied, “I wasn’t busy hating anything, I promise.” One hand waved in the general vicinity of the alien lifeform now growing within her. “I’m only a little nervous about this whole having a kid of my own thing.”

“Why?” Rose asked, so guileless Solana could’ve hugged her. “You’ve been doing real good with us, except for when you almost mixed up the breakfast foods and when you almost locked us out of the house and when—”

Tyrra cleared her throat loudly.

“Oh,” said Rose. “Sorry. Yeah. You’re doing good. Definitely.”

She said _definitely_ exactly the way Garrus would have said it. Only Garrus would have smirked. And then Sol would have had to kill him.

“I think you get used to it, anyway,” offered Tyrra, finally looking up from the hands folded in her lap. “Taking care of babies. They don’t do very much. Just eat and sleep and need their diapers changed. Mostly they like it when you hold them and sing to them, and they don’t like loud noises. They like to feel safe.”

Solana’s breath caught when she realized Tyrra was speaking from experience, and that the experience hid the kind of grief no nine-year-old kid should ever have known. Sol was forced to correct for an unintentional swerve. The weave and drop made Rose giggle.

“Well,” Sol said, too brightly, her subharmonics hiding nothing, “I have to admit I don’t have any experience at all. Garrus is the older brother; I think he did all the baby stuff when I was small. That’s what my mom always said when he pissed me off later, anyway: ‘Be nice to your brother, dear heart, he used to change your diapers.’”

“Dad’s pretty good with babies,” Rose agreed, kicking her feet back and forth. Solana noticed she was wearing different colored socks pulled up overtop of her envirosuit, one pink and one bright blue with sparkly stars. “Mom’s soooo bad.”

Tyrra’s mandibles fluttered in amusement. “She really is.”

Solana laughed. “If Shepard—of all people—can set such a low bar, maybe there’s hope I’ll be able to step over it.”

Tyrra glanced out the window and didn’t immediately look away; the smile remained on her face. Solana couldn’t help feeling it was a victory. “I think she doesn’t do well when she can’t talk to them.”

“Sounds about right.” Solana held up a finger. “She’s good with words.” She’s held up the other. “She’s good with guns.” Opening her palm, she shrugged one shoulder. “Something she can neither talk to or shoot at probably causes no end of discomfort. I should remember that.”

Tyrra laughed. Rose leaned forward against her restraints and said, “One time she almost dropped a baby someone wanted her to hold, like, for a picture? It was screaming and wriggling and the mom was all ‘Please, Commander Shepard’ even though Mom’s not a commander anymore but I guess that’s how everyone knows her and the baby was just like, ‘Wahh’ and Mom was getting all flustered until Dad kinda saved her and made a joke about always having her six even against, um, the most hostile hostiles? It was pretty funny. Then the baby puked right in her face. Like, a _lot._ I think it was on the vids. You should look it up.”

“Oh, I _will_ ,” said Solana, grinning. “I absolutely will. Now, girls, I was thinking we might do a little shopping, but we could also—”

When the crash sounded and the skycar began plummeting to the ground, Solana’s first thought was that there’d been some kind of rockfall—her route had taken them close to the mountains to avoid the worst of the valley’s Reaper destruction—but the screech of metal on metal whispered an even more alarming truth. They were under attack. Her fingers danced over the haptic interface, trying to wrestle back control and even out the car’s trajectory. Beneath her talons, her instruments recorded a flash of energy before flickering and dying.

She swallowed her panic because she had to. She had to.

In the shadow of the mountain, the interior of the vehicle was dark without its glowing lights and reassuring screens and readouts.

Rose screamed once, high and terrified. Tyrra remained silent, talons digging hard into the seat.

“It’s okay,” Solana said, breathless. The side of the car bounced hard off the rock face, potently punctuating her lie. She reached for the weapon at her hip, while scrambling for the other in its secret compartment under her interface panel. The first she attempted to hand to Tyrra, but the older girl only stared straight ahead, mandibles pulled tight to her face and eyes so wide Solana knew she was seeing something very different from the inside of a falling car.

_—beasts wearing turian faces krogan bodies turian teeth tearing turian eyes and her leg her leg her leg leave me dad leave me just go on without me save yourself they’re turians oh spirits they were turians once—_

Rose took the weapon before Solana could stop her. Her face was wet with tears beneath the envirosuit’s mask. With a weary sadness so at odds with her usual ebullience, Rose closed her hands around a grip far too big for her little hands and said, “I know what to do, Auntie Sol. Aim for the eyes. Always point at the eyes and pull and pull and pull and pull and don’t stop.”

Some of the pressure from above eased. The backup generator stuttered to life, providing enough power for Sol to get the safety landing gear mostly extended, though she had to release her restraints and reach for the manual controls to do so, and the damned things still stuck half-in, half-out. When the second crash came, her head hit the side window hard enough to make her see stars.

— _turian faces krogan bodies turian keening from a monster’s throat—_

The roar in her ears refused to diminish. Clutching at her weapon, she tried to see into the back seat, but her vision remained alternately blurred and dark. Pain arcing down her spine and across her belly stole a low keening note from her throat.

_—i won’t leave you you know i won’t leave you—_

Metal crunched. A third attack from above was enough to finally push the car into the dirt, and though the landing gear cushioned them somewhat, the lack of power and maneuverability sent Solana against the window again, curling so her back and cowl took most of the damage. She blinked, swiping at the blood in her eyes, gasping around the pain. She’d had worse. She’d lived through worse.

_—turian teeth tearing—_

“Rose? You okay, dear heart? Tyrra? Tyrra?”

“Yes,” replied Rose promptly. “Is…is it Reapers?”

“The Reapers are gone. I promise.” Solana swallowed hard, tasting yet more blood. Her bad leg felt strange, hollow. Like the phantom limb tingling she’d suffered before her surgery to replace it. Another screaming ripple of pain twisted her gut. “Is Tyrra—”

“She’s in the bad place.”

The driver’s side window imploded in a shower of glass that skittered across Solana’s plates without enough force to cause damage. She wasted neither time nor words, turning her gun in the direction of the sound and shooting. No satisfying sound of injury met her shots.

“Rose, tell me what you see.”

In a whisper, Rose said, “There’s a lot of legs, Auntie Sol. I can’t see their faces. It’s not Reapers. I think it’s—”

Unconsciousness found Solana before Rose finished. She fought it, clawing at the light with everything she had. Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.

_—they’re turians oh spirits they were turians once—_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I swear I didn't mean to abandon this story for as long as I did. In fact, the arc starting here has been in my head for more than two years; I just don't know why my brain wouldn't cooperate and write it. Since I know what happens next (and for the next while), I most sincerely hope you won't see a break nearly as long. Thanks to those who waited so patiently for more of this  <3


	14. Active Duty

Time off active duty hadn’t dulled Shepard’s sense of impending danger. Now, of course, that instinct mostly came in handy when Rose was about to attempt something doomed to end in blood and a trip to the hospital. Still, as she sat off to the side around a crowded table watching her husband attempt to both smooth ruffled feathers and remain firm about the political stances the still-new Council deemed important, the prickle of the skin at the back of her neck went from mildly irritating to downright distracting. Had she been in the field, it would have been enough to make her draw her weapon. She simply couldn’t put her finger on why. Splitting political hairs was nothing new, after all, no matter how heated the opposition.

Her lips twisted in a self-deprecating smile and dragged her hands through her hair in an attempt to soothe herself. Doubtless it was something ridiculous. Probably some deep-seated fear for the children, though Shepard had ample proof Solana was capable of rising to any occasion—even if that occasion was two bundles of giggles, pranks and inexhaustible energy. She glanced at the time. Half an hour until the next scheduled break; she’d call then, even if it meant enduring Solana’s inevitable ribbing about people who worried too much.

The prickle did not subside.

When a turian aide entered quietly and began scanning the room, the feeling of _not right, not right, be on alert_ only intensified. His gaze lingered for a moment on Garrus, then shifted until it landed on her. This was followed by a brief, beckoning gesture. She rose at once, moving along the outside of the room as stealthily as she was able to without actually resorting to using her tactical cloak.

Nothing good ever came of aides interrupting meetings to whisper in ears. Especially when they wore expressions as serious as this one wore.

Garrus, speaking calmly at the front of the room while another politician shouted at him about _impossible demands, ridiculous concessions_ , never paused, but she felt his eyes follow her out. If she knew him—and she did—he’d find a way to wrap things up without anyone realizing he’d maneuvered the end of the meeting far too early.

He was getting good at that. Diplomacy. It might have made her smile, if the abrupt appearance of the turian aide hadn’t struck such a discordant, sour note in her.

_What do you need me to do?_

But no, it wasn’t that, not anymore. Now it was, _what’s happened to the children?_

The turian didn’t quite meet her eyes. He hunched a little into his cowl, mandibles pulled tight to his face. “Comman—sorry, Admiral. Admiral Shepard. I’m sorry to interrupt—”

“I’m sure you’ve got a good reason, Lieutenant…?”

He blinked at her. His eyes were very green. His markings were the same color. Though it was never particularly easy to place a turian’s age—not for her, anyway—she had the distinct impression this one was still _very_ new to his commission. “Vatix, ma’am. And yes, ma’am. Uh, General Fedorian sent me.”

A mantle of cold clarity settled over her. She saw every anxious twitch in the turian standing before her. She heard the faint metallic whirr of the environmental systems, and over that the faintest hum of Garrus’ voice. If she’d been wearing a hardsuit, she’d have already pulled up her HUD, she’d have already been planning.

The aide looked very much as though he anticipated being the messenger doomed to get shot after delivering his message. With every nerve singing, every instinct she’d thought dormant pulled taut, she could not actually bring herself to disabuse him of this possibility.

“Go on. Is there a reason Naxus didn’t come himself?”

“Comms are dampened in here. As you know. To prevent interruptions?”

“I am aware, Lieutenant Vatix. Could we skip to the message, please? Is it Solana? The children?”

Whatever he saw on her face made the aide cough and continue quickly, “Oh. Yes, of course. Sorry, ma’am. No, he didn’t mention his wife or your children. He asked me to escort you to his office.”

“To what purpose?”

“He didn’t elaborate. Only said it was urgent.”

She closed her eyes for the moment it took to inhale a sharp, annoyed breath. “You could have opened with that, Lieutenant. Let me get Garrus—”

“He asked for you, ma’am. He said it wasn’t something, uh, requiring Councilor Vakarian’s presence.” Vatix shifted from one foot to the other. “He did have a human visitor with him.” His mandibles flicked once before drawing tight to his face once again. “Sorry, ma’am. I—should have mentioned that. He did tell me to.”

“Yes,” she agreed, narrowing her eyes and gesturing for him to precede her. “Lead on, Lieutenant.”

After two or three attempts at conversation were met with yet more nervousness and single-syllable, stammered replies, Shepard fell into silence at Vatix’s side. Her skin did not stop its incessant prickling. Her fingers itched to close around the grip of a pistol, and it took some effort to keep the bland smile on her face and her hands still at her sides. Vatix, she noted, did not have her self-control; his long digits tapped a random, nervous pattern against his thigh.

“So, is it hero worship or hate?” Shepard asked, after turning down two different hallways—each emptier than the last—and enduring another agonizing minute of total silence. “No judgement. Just curious.”

“Sorry?” Vatix asked, and though she was not nearly as expert at reading other turian subharmonics as she was Garrus and Tyrra, the young lieutenant’s discomfort was palpable even to her.

“Effortlessly being able to start conversations is something of a point of personal pride,” Shepard returned, carefully modulating her own voice. Friendly. Even. Interested. “I can’t figure out why you won’t oblige me.” She smiled mildly. “I’m not used to being thwarted. I figure you’re nervous because you’ve heard one too many exaggerated stories, or you hate my guts. Either’s fair.”

Vatix didn’t laugh. His fingers stopped tapping and immediately headed for the flap of the pocket they’d been dancing over during the entire length of their walk. Her skin burned. Before she could second-guess herself—or let the words _galactic incident_ —override her instinct and the relatively unsubstantiated evidence she’d collected, she wrapped her fingers around his reaching wrist, spun to catch his arm behind his back, and brought one foot down on the back of his left spur with just enough pressure to ensure he froze. His audible breath wheezed with barely controlled pain. Wrex would’ve said Vatix had a quad; Shepard knew how damned sensitive—and vulnerable—an unarmored spur was. She had, of course, been counting on it.

“You want to tell me what’s really going on here, Vatix?”

“General Fedorian—”

“Wouldn’t have sent you. He’d have sent someone who knows damned well I can find his office without help.” He tried to rise up to give himself leverage to ease her pressure on his arm, but this only brought more weight down on his spur. His breath came in swift and shallow gasps. “Not my first rodeo. And I’m good with maps.”

Vatix said nothing. She put a little more of her weight on his spur, feeling the give. She didn’t think the high-pitched whine he emitted was intentional. “You want to try again?”

“It’s too late, anyway,” Vatix gasped.

Much as she wanted to finish the work she’d started on his spur, she wanted answers more. She twisted his arm further, pulling it nearly from its socket. Plates weren’t much use at the joints. Part of the reason for the bulkiness of turian armor was protection at those weakest junctures. Vatix wasn’t wearing armor any more than she was, and whatever advantage his height might have given him in hand to hand was lost to her strength and better positioning.

_What do you need me to do?_

“For _what_?” she snarled, applying just enough pressure to make him yelp. With her free hand, she reached into the pocket he’d been toying with and retrieved a syringe prepped full of a liquid she couldn’t identify. Her guts twisted and she swallowed down the bile and bitter panic that always threatened to overwhelm her when she saw needles. Of all the goddamned ridiculous things. “You’ve got about thirty seconds before I use one of the half-dozen ways I know how to kill your species without needing a weapon.” Her fingers tightened reflexively around the syringe. “Or maybe I’ll just give you a taste of your own medicine, here. Whatever the hell it is.”

“You think I’m afraid to die? I just needed to get you out of the way. And I did. _I did._ Your time is done.” Vatix’s subharmonics steadied; even through the pain, Shepard heard the confidence. The zealotry. She wished she didn’t have quite so much experience with zealotry; the tenor of it was unmistakable. And terrifying. “You think we’re blind? No. We see your fingerprints on everything Vakarian does. We know his face is the mask you wear to control the weak turians who wish only for new overlords to appease. We’ve had enough. We will have turian sovereignty again, free from humanity’s pestilent influence. We carried your people through the war and—”

Shepard didn’t let him finish. “So it was hate then. Good to know.”

The steps of this dance were familiar, for all she’d been avoiding practicing. Like a waltz. One-two-three, one-two-three; nothing so complicated as a tango. On one, she finished dislocating his shoulder. On two, she shattered his left spur beneath her foot. On three, she crushed the other, effectively hamstringing him. Another turn around the floor would’ve seen him cooling in a pool of his own blue blood, but she paused, thinking of his words, his warning. Thinking about time.

By the time he hit the floor, screaming, Shepard was already running.


	15. Get the Job Done

Though Garrus didn’t recognize the aide who came to fetch Shepard, he did, of course, immediately see the message in the seemingly insignificant flutter of Shepard’s fingers as she vanished through the door behind him: _On it._ Garrus didn’t need the additional admonition to keep eyes on the hostiles; that went without saying. Always.

The current target wasn’t carrying a gun or toting a grenade launcher, but that didn’t make him any less of a threat. Tavus Ranix had a big mouth and had been doing nothing but using it to spread his strong opinions for weeks. Months, probably. Long enough for rumbles to make it into Garrus’ intelligence briefs halfway across the galaxy. Long enough to put the wheels in motion for the overdue visit to Palaven. Shepard called it killing two birds with one stone. Garrus preferred to think he was taking a minor detour on the way to truly enjoying their family vacation; Ranix and his borderline sedition weren’t worth more time than that.

As soon as the door closed behind Shepard, Ranix said, “And why is she even at this meeting? Answer that, Vakarian. She’s no diplomat, no—”

“Councilor,” Garrus interrupted smoothly, casually, as if Ranix hadn’t just leveled a very real insult—by anyone’s standards, not just the Hierarchy’s—in omitting the honorific. Ranix’s mandibles flicked, betraying his irritation. Garrus fixed Ranix with an unwavering gaze until the man dropped his eyes and shifted in his seat.

Still, defiance colored Ranix’s subharmonics when he spoke again. “She’s human. She has no place in the politics of the Hierarchy.”

“And the politics of the Hierarchy do not outweigh the greater galactic concerns of the Council.”

“Sparatus—”

“Is dead. And wouldn’t have given a Hierarchy-first political agenda the weight of his support, either.”

Ranix began to sputter, hurriedly outlining all the ways in which Garrus was wrong—about politics, about Sparatus, about Shepard. Garrus tuned him out, while carefully monitoring the faces of those gathered around them to gauge how much support Ranix truly had. A couple of younger turians who’d risen far during the war did not bother hiding their disgust at Ranix’s words; others, equally mixed in age and rank, wore open expressions of support and even hostility.

The ones whose expressions remained neutral were those Garrus made special note of. Two to his left. One at Ranix’s right hand. The turian at the door who’d admitted the aide that whisked Shepard away.

Garrus rose, halting Ranix mid-rant. Something about tradition. Something about honor. The same old quicksand of turian rhetoric that had been sucking at Garrus’ heels since the day his temporary promotion to turian Councilor became formalized.

Another vitriolic barb about Shepard.

Shepard, who’d fought and fought and _fought_ ; who’d faced every threat—even those whose defeat should have been impossible—head-on; who’d been, in every way save physiology, far more turian than many of those now complaining about her. 

“Tell me, Tavus, as you’re so concerned about Shepard’s involvement, would you have presumed to tell Nihlus Kryik where he could and could not go? Avitus Rix? Saren Arterius?”

Ranix snorted, so openly dismissive Garrus had to count backward from ten to keep from ripping his mandibles off. “She’s not here as a Spectre. You insult us both if that’s the story you mean to hide behind. If she was a warrior once—”

“My wife goes where she wishes,” Garrus said. The pair of neutral-expressioned turians at his left exchanged a swift glance. “With the Council’s blessing.”

“She’s a klixen without fire. A mere figurehead. You speak of the Council, but we all know what a ruse _that_ is. Humanity will not rest until all the galaxy bows to them, defers to them—”

Whatever Ranix was expecting, the stunned expression on his face was more than enough to tell Garrus it wasn’t laughter at his expense. Garrus shook his head, the mirth undercut by the very dangerous thrum of his subharmonics. “And yet I notice you felt it necessary to wait until your people pulled her from the room before airing your grievances, Tavus.” When Ranix said nothing, Garrus added, “I’m sorry, was that meant to be secret?”

When one of the turians to his left began to stand, Garrus flung out an arm and snapped in a voice of command stolen from Shepard, “Sit!”

To his surprise, and evidently the surprise of the man himself, the turian sat.

“I’m not finished,” Garrus continued, while monitoring the feed of statistics and numbers his visor fed him. “You’ve had time—Spirits, it feels like eternity—to complain. I think I’d like a few minutes before I’m forced to deal with this nonsense.”

The turian who’d sat so abruptly now shifted in his seat, decidedly not looking anywhere but at the floor between his feet. Garrus saw the fight go out of him, and knew he could adjust his plan of attack to exclude him. “See, Tavus, maybe I’m a little slow—you certainly seem to think so—but you’re mixing your metaphors. I’m curious. Is Shepard the klixen without her fire? Or the puppetmaster pulling my strings? Do you know that one? It’s human. Pretty apt. It’s a little like the one of ours about the turian coward who directs from safely behind the lines of battle and runs when the shooting grows too near.”

Ranix’s mandibles flared, catching the implied insult just as Garrus had intended.

Garrus held up a more obviously insulting hand to forestall the inevitable bombast. It had been a long time since anyone looked at him with the pure, murderous hate Ranix now turned his way. Garrus did not rise to the bait. “Let me tell you what’s happening here. You’re going to do something irreversibly stupid any minute. You’ve already done something stupid by summoning Shepard out of the room. You think you’re doing it for the right reasons. I get that. I disagree with you entirely, but I get it. Here’s the deal: If you don’t do the stupid thing, this goes no further. No hard feelings. You don’t particularly want my hard feelings, Tavus, believe me.” Garrus crossed his arms over his chest. “If you do the stupid thing, you’ll be stopped, tried, and persecuted to the full extent of the law.”

Garrus tilted his head. Another insult. A challenge. A little dare, if he was quite honest. Had she been in the room, Shepard would have given him one of her _don’t poke the thresher maw_ looks. “You know, this isn’t my first coup. It certainly isn’t the most effective. I’m giving you the chance to pretend this never happened. Just stay in your seat and let me walk unaccosted out that door. Rise, and I’ll consider it an act of disobedience tantamount to a declaration of war against the Council. Understood?”

The turian standing guard beside that door rocked from side to side, sending an anxious glance in the direction Shepard had disappeared. Garrus’ visor told him she’d been gone longer than expected. He wasn’t particularly worried, of course, but her absence did necessitate another hasty revision to his plans.

This wasn’t the first time he’d been trapped alone in a room full of potential hostiles, either. At least this hadn’t come on the heels of ten body bags and betrayal that cut to the quick.

Ranix lifted his head. He put his hands on the table, preparatory to using it to push himself upright. Even without the stats fed through Garrus’ visor, the bunch of shoulders, the twitch of mandibles, even the subtle change in pupil dilation—all these telegraphed Ranix’s intention to defy.

Garrus knew stubbornness when he saw it. He’d seen it in himself often enough. Ranix was stubborn. Worse, he was entirely convinced he was _right_. Enemies like him didn’t back down. Despite his earlier insult, Garrus knew Ranix was the type to keep on clawing, tooth and bloody talon, until he had to be put down like a rabid varren.

Ranix began to rise.

“Stupid it is,” Garrus said on a sigh.

None of them had guns, of course; turian security hadn’t slipped so badly, or been infiltrated so completely. He supposed he had that to be thankful for. Most would, however, have omni-tools, and he doubted they’d all been completely scrubbed of offensive programs.

No one ever touched Garrus’ omni-tool. No one ever asked him to remove it. Diplomatic immunity had its perks. As soon as Ranix began his insubordination, Garrus triggered the series of routines he’d programmed the night before. Before Ranix’s ass had completely left its chair, a combination of damping field, overload, and sabotage neutralized the tech threats in the room, while leaving his own intact. He kicked the edge of the table, flipping it onto its side, and ducking behind the cover it provided.

A fist—one of the neutral-faced turians, unsurprising—connected with empty air where his head had been. Garrus retaliated by driving an elbow into the man’s unprotected waist and chopping downward to deliver an incapacitating blow to the spur. Anything but neutral now, the man went down with a choked scream.

Garrus hated battles without clear sides. At least when the Blue Suns and Blood Pack and Eclipse had come at him, they’d been conveniently color-coded.

Unlike that battle on Omega, to remain sniper-still here was almost certainly a recipe for disaster. As soon as he’d felled the first attacker, he pushed hard against the table to unsettle anyone attempting to draw too near. He spared a half-moment’s wish for Shepard at his six. Keeping the wall at his back, he darted to one side, launched an _incredibly_ illegal (and effective) concussive round based on the same tech Shepard used for her incineration ability. Instead of setting the room on fire with him still in it, the round hit Ranix and detonated, knocking him and everyone around him—friends and enemies alike—flat. Even Garrus rocked back at the force, but only for a moment.

A breath brought him to Ranix’s side; another brought forth an omni-blade small enough to slide against his throat. In the eerie orange glow, Ranix’s defiance remained absolute. Though the pressure of speaking cut his own hide enough to draw blood, he spat, “I’ll gladly martyr myself for this cause, Vakarian, when it means the very survival of the turian Spirit.”

“You talk too much,” Garrus replied. “And you’re under arrest.”

The door crashed inward, revealing nothing but empty hallway beyond for anyone unaccustomed to the barely-there shimmer of Shepard’s tactical cloak. He tried to imagine the look on her face as she scanned the aftermath. His guess was equal parts pride, exasperation, and relief. She didn’t have the chance to give voice to her feelings, though, because as her cloak vanished, the sound of heavy footfalls rang in the corridor beyond. She dropped into a crouch, doubtless counting the seconds before she could activate her cloak again.

Garrus didn’t realize he’d been hurt until he felt the strange hot-cold sensation of pain spreading out from his side. Ranix, defiant until the end, pushed forward, slicing his own throat against Garrus’ omni-blade before he could release it. Hot blood spilled over Garrus’ hand, the color sickly in the omni-tool’s glow. Under the final gurgling shudder of the man’s death, Garrus heard the tinkle of glass hitting the floor. Such a small sound.

A syringe.

Emptied.

“Kaius,” said Shepard at the door, her voice sounding far away, as if she were on a different planet and not just across the room. “We’ve lost Ranix, but everything else appears to be under cont—”

 _No_ , thought Garrus, as the hot-cold agony spread up his side and down his arm, as it curled beneath his plates, as it reached for his heart.

“No,” echoed his father, aloud. Terror fought the poison gripping Garrus’ heart. Something in his father’s subharmonics. _You can still get the job done._ “It’s not. I’ve just heard from Naxus. It’s—it’s Solana, Shepard. And the children.”


	16. In the Dark

Rose woke up feeling weird. Like sick, but not quite sick. Her brain felt all fuzzy and she was about to call for her mom to say she couldn’t go to school when she remembered she wasn’t home on Earth. They were on Palaven.

They’d been out with Auntie Sol.

The skycar. The crash. Tyrra in the bad place and shouting and legs outside the windows, lots of legs, so many people and Rose didn’t know any of them, even though she was real good at telling different turians apart. Auntie Sol, slumping over the controls, limp against the straps holding her into her seat, hands still curled into fighting fists even though she was sleeping.

Rose was sure she’d just been sleeping.

Rose remembered kicking and screaming as they pulled her from the car, kicking and screaming and reaching for mandibles to pull. Dad told them that was a good way to make a turian let you go. Mandibles or unarmored spurs. Just like Mom said noses and privates and tops of feet for humans.

Rose had gone for the mandibles. Managed to tug one or two before they did whatever they did to make her go to sleep.

When she opened her eyes, it was still so dark Rose couldn’t tell where she was. She couldn’t see what was pressing her down, but it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Her cheek was squashed flat against a cold, metal surface. She blinked and blinked, waiting for her eyes to go back to normal like they always did if she woke up scared in the middle of the night. They didn’t. Not really. The black was just more black.

“Tyrra?” she whispered into the darkness. “Tyr? You there? You gotta wake up, Tyr, you gotta come back from the bad place.”

Rose waited and waited for an answer. When none came, she held her breath, trying to listen for Tyrra’s breathing. Sometimes her sister made little noises if she was sleeping. Not big snores, like Dad. Tiny ones. At first, Rose only heard her own heart, _thump-thump-thump_ , way too loud. Under that, though, a hum that was familiar after spending so long on the _Normandy._ Spaceship. She didn’t think anyone here was going to jump out and yell a nice surprise. All the surprises so far were bad.

No Tyrra.

She squeezed her eyes shut again until they hurt, until she didn’t feel like crying or screaming. This was all just a big problem. Crying didn’t help solve problems. Ideas solved problems. Like when she and Tyrra always won Spectre Wars. Like all the ways they stayed safe at the end of the war. This wasn’t as bad as that. No husks were trying to get them. No one was shooting.

Slowly, slowly, the panic began to go away again. “Okay,” Rose said, her voice comforting in the dark, like the way Mom talked to her when she woke up from bad dreams. “Okay, Rosie, you can do this.”

With her eyes still closed, she tried to turn over on her back. Whatever was holding her down wouldn’t let her move that much, but she found she could still wriggle. It was like being held in a way too tight hug by someone who wouldn’t let go, but who didn’t have mandibles to pull or privates to kick. Biting her lip in concentration, she pushed out every single bit of breath she could, like Auntie Liara showed her when they were playing yoga. Even though it made her chest hurt, Rose didn’t breathe in again right away. She squirmed and pushed with her heels against the metal. By the time she _had_ to take another breath, she’d definitely moved a little bit.

She breathed some big breaths before trying again. She moved a bit more. Then a bit more. She squeezed her shoulders together as much as she could, trying to make herself even smaller. Finally, finally, her shoulders slid out, and she was able to free her hands enough to pull herself completely out from under the weight. Feeling with her fingers in the dark, she could tell they were some kind of metal straps, like in the medbay on the _Normandy._

Careful not to fall off, she pulled herself to the edge of the cold metal. It, too, was like a bed, but without any nice sheets or pillows on it. It seemed like a hundred thousand million years since Auntie Jack had helped them fly off the comfy beds in the _Normandy_ ’s crew quarters. Just thinking about it made Rose’s breath catch, and not because she was trying to hold it this time. She wanted her stuffed hanar named Snuggles With the Sleeper. She wanted Tyrra. She wanted a _grown-up_.

A big fat stupid tear fell out of her eye and ran down her face. Then another one. She could feel the tracks on her face, wet like the snail trails on the path up to their door on Earth. She sniffled before her face could get all snotty. The room was still black. She had to bring her hand right up to her face to even see it was a hand.

Afraid of running into something in the dark, she got down on her hands and knees, and started crawling slowly, looking for a wall. If she could just find a wall, she could find all the edges of the room. Maybe a door to bang on. Instead, she shuffled directly into something that fell over with a horrible crash, like the sound of Odie’s hamster cage breaking. Rose froze, palms pressed to the floor, heart pounding so hard she thought someone could prob’ly hear it back on Earth.

She did find a door, though, but only because it slid open. She recoiled at the sudden burning brightness of the lights.

“Thought I heard something moving around in here.”

Rose squinted. She couldn’t see any details, but the vague shape was definitely turian. So was the voice. She couldn’t read subharmonics as well as her mom, but his tone said he wasn’t there to rescue her.

“I’m not something. I’m someone. Where’s my sister?”

The big turian didn’t even look at her. “How did you get out of that thing?”

Lifting her chin, eyes streaming from the light, Rose said nothing.

“Get up.”

Rose didn’t move. She clenched her jaw to keep from feeling scared.

“We can do this the hard way or the easy way, kid. Either way, you’re going back in restraints.”

With her eyes finally getting used to the brightness, she could make out an unfamiliar face with dark hide and coppery plates. The turian was barefaced and wore unremarkable armor that even Rose knew wasn’t all from one complete set. He had a pistol at his hip but no big guns strapped on his back.

“Where’s my sister? I want to see my sister.”

The turian’s head-tilt was exactly like a human rolling their eyes. “She’s not your sister. She’s a turian. You’re a human. Get it? Different species.” He said the last two words slowly, like he was talking to a baby.

Rose got to her feet and crossed her arms over her chest. “We’re sisters. I want my sister. I want my sister _right now._ ”

“And I want a million credits and a date with Sha’ira, but we don’t all get what we want, do we?” When Rose still didn’t move, he grimaced, mandibles flexing. “Spirits save me from little humans who think they’re tough.”

“I am tough,” Rose said. “And I think you’re pretty stupid. Our mom and dad—”

“They’re not your parents any more than the turian kid’s your sister, you dumb pyjak. You’re political pawns. You know that word, right? Pawns?”

Rose narrowed her eyes. “I know my mom’s gonna kill you dead, but only if Dad doesn’t get you first.”

Whatever word he called her, her translator didn’t know it. Prob’ly something real bad, then. She didn’t care. She’d been called all kinda bad things before. Mom always said people who used insults were just sad on the inside, and jealous, and prob’ly weren’t loved enough when they were kids. Dad said they weren’t worth her time.

The turian came at her with his arms out to grab, which was super dumb, because everyone knew you couldn’t fight like that with someone smaller and faster than you. Like she’d done a hundred times with her dad, she pretended to move forward, but instead ducked under the turian’s legs, jumping up on his back by grabbing the edge of his armored cowl. She’d surprised the turian just like she’d hoped, and he was still staring at the space where she’d been when she reached around, grabbed one mandible, and used her momentum to pull it _back-back-back_ until it made a bad sound. The turian dropped to his knees, keening.

Still clinging to his blind spot on his back, Rose closed her hand around the other mandible and said, “I’m not dumb and I’m not stupid and I’m not a pyjak. We’re on a spaceship and I know I prob’ly can’t get off and I know you prob’ly wanna use us but you prob’ly don’t wanna kill us.” His hand shook as he reached up to try and pull hers away, but she only tugged harder on the mandible until he stopped. “I want my sister. I want her right now. She’s prob’ly scared and she’s prob’ly in the bad place and you’re bad people if you leave her alone. So take me to her right now or I’ll pull this right off and talk to someone else.”

“Now, now, little klixen,” said a new voice, a gentler voice, a scarier voice, at the door, “leave the poor man alone. You’ve done quite enough damage for one day.”

Rose only tightened her grip. The new turian was also barefaced, but she had delicate mandibles currently stretched in the fakest fakey smile. Turians probably thought she was pretty. Rose didn’t. Her fakey fake smile made her the ugliest turian in the whole galaxy.

“I’m not a klixen. I’m not a pyjak. I’m Rose Catherine Marshal Shepard-Vakarian. And I want my sister.”

“Then you shall have her. Indeed, I see it was unwise of us to attempt to keep you apart. Can I make amends?”

“Does that mean say you’re sorry?”

The turian lady nodded, but her eyes were still cold over the fakey smile. “It does.”

“No more blackness and no more being tied up.”

“As you wish. You and your sister will be treated as honored guests.”

Rose almost told the woman not to lie to her, but stopped herself. She prob’ly didn’t even think Rose knew about subharmonics. Rose released the mandible and jumped away from the turian on the floor in case he wanted to think about revenge. He didn’t. He only curled over his hurting face and kept on keening weakly. It was almost enough to make her feel bad. Almost.

“Okay,” Rose agreed, smiling her own fakey fake smile, looking all around her now that she could see properly again. “Guests sounds nice. Can I talk to my mom soon?”

The turian woman put a hand on Rose’s head, but it wasn’t nice at all. For a second, she thought the turian might just break her neck. Rose couldn’t help cringing. The woman laughed, softly. “Let’s see about your sister first, shall we?”

And Rose knew, all the way down to her belly and her bones, this woman was never going to let her talk to Mom and Dad ever again, and that she was so, so, so much scarier than the turian crying on the floor.

“Okay,” Rose repeated, and was glad when she didn’t immediately start crying herself.


	17. Not Like This

Garrus woke with a start as sudden and overwhelming as a stim-shot, sitting upright even as he clawed at the smothering blankets, haunted by the lingering images left by his nightmare. His father, grim-faced. Shepard in a doorway. _It’s—it’s Solana, Shepard. And the children._

A nightmare. Far worse than the ones featuring screaming Banshees and Reaper turians whose faces he couldn’t help examining, looking for familiar angles, familiar curves.

Just a nightmare.

And yet.

And yet, the bed was not his bed, the sheets not his sheets. His side ached, almost as if someone truly had jabbed a needle into the soft hide of his waist and emptied a vial full of poison into him. Instead of flowers, or candles, or the faint scent of Shepard’s perfume, the only smell was the universally unsettling antiseptic stench unique to hospitals.

Even with his heart slamming like a fist desperate to punch through the wall of his chest, bone and blood and plates be damned, it took real effort to force his eyes open. He sucked in a breath; too shallow. Another. Another. The blankets were a white blur. Blinking did not sharpen his vision. No telltale halo of red hair sat at his bedside.

_It’s—it’s Solana, Shepard. And the children._

“Garrus. Hey. In and out. One breath at a time, G. One cardiac arrest per day is more than enough.”

He swung his head toward the sound, recognizing his sister’s voice even before her indistinct edges took shape. The sun behind her was too bright, even dimmed by the darkened panes of glass. Like his eyes, his voice wasn’t working yet, either. His talons clenched and unclenched in sheets nothing like the soft ones Shepard always splurged on.

_Tell me,_ he wanted to say. _Tell me._

Instead of words, only faint keening escaped on his released breath.

Solana said, “I’m sorry, G. I don’t know where they are.”

Not a nightmare, then. He squeezed his eyes shut wishing he’d never opened them at all, and curled around a roiling sickness in his gut that had nothing to do with whatever poison he’d been dosed with. It took three breaths and half a dozen attempts before he managed the word, “Baby?”

“A little early, but healthy. Garrus, they’ll be here any minute and—”

Whatever his sister meant to say was interrupted by the arrival of a squad of doctors. Garrus could tell by the swish of their medical robes, the sound of too many talons tapping against too many datapads. They chirped and squawked and chattered, using words like _cardiac arrest_ and _lucky_ and _Councilor Vakarian Councilor Vakarian Councilor Vakarian._ One slid gloved hands under his chin, forcing him to look up.

“Still having trouble with your vision? That’s to be expected with—”

“Casta, his vision is the least of his—”

“This heart rate is still unacceptable. I need a dose of—”

“Councilor Vakarian, do you remember what—”

Garrus shook his head. Faces he could only tell apart by the watercolor smudges of their different-colored markings bobbed in and out of his field of view. From her side of the room, Solana snarled something about giving him space, about backing off, about having a little decency. If anyone heard her, they didn’t listen; he decided this meant she, at least, was no longer at medical risk. Small mercies, Shepard would say.

_Where are my children?_

He couldn’t breathe. Every time he tried to take a full inhale, new markings pressed into his personal space, grabbed at his limbs, flashed scanners and datapads and lights at him. White Brow Swirls injected something into him that spread relief through his veins like a cool hand on a fevered head, and reminded him of his mother. Purple Parallel Lines muttered under his breath and pulsed more light into Garrus’ eyes. Orange Cheek Plates leaned in to squint at him.

“Actually, I think that helped, Casta.”

“I did tell you I thought the poison’s base was—”

“You’re in my way. I don’t want to have to explain that the turian councilor lost the use of his left arm because two idiots wouldn’t let me properly assess—”

White Brow Swirl’s relief gave Garrus his voice back. He even thought the contents of her hypospray were sharpening the edges of his vision, just a little. He blinked. He said, “Space. Now.”

“Councilor Vakarian, sir, with all due respect—”

“You heard him,” said the voice he’d been missing since he woke up from his nightmare-not-nightmare. “Step back.”

The cluster of doctors turned, their heads moving in eerily bizarre unison, like a herd of kriksa hearing a sound they perceived as a threat. Even in his current state, Garrus thought they were right to turn, and right to be nervous.

“You can’t be in here, human,” said Purple Parallel Lines. “Especially not—”

“Oh, _please_ finish that thought,” Solana said. “Please.”

Shepard ignored them both.

White Brow Swirls stepped aside as Shepard approached. Garrus blinked again, his vision clear enough now to make out the charcoal and black and deep red armor with its white and red N7 on the breast. She had a pistol at her hip, and the familiar bulk of a Black Widow strapped to her back.

Her hair, grown long since she first woke in a Cerberus lab, was pulled tightly back from her face into a hard knot, the way she’d worn it when they first met. He’d forgotten how large that hairstyle made her eyes look. How fragile her neck was beneath it. His inability to find his voice had nothing to do with the poison.

He’d never seen her look so hard. Not with the Council. Not even during the darkest parts of the war. Not when she’d nearly lost everything that mattered to her afterward. He didn’t need to see clearly to know her expression remained remote beneath the warpaint of her makeup. For a moment, just a moment, he thought she’d reach out and touch his face, his shoulder, his hand, but she only folded her own hands behind her back in a posture stolen from Steven Hackett.

He certainly didn’t need clear eyes to know it was all armor, every bit of it, protecting a tender heart too used to losing everything it ever cared about. He didn’t need clear eyes to know the difference between a hard that would bend and one that would break.

Garrus had thought he wanted nothing more than to see Shepard take up her armor again, her identity, her rightful place and rightful role. N7. Spectre. Hero.

_Not like this._

That Garrus, he decided now, with his heart sinking, was a damned idiot. Now that she was gone, he wanted the Shepard with her hair cascading loose down her back to her waist, dancing in the kitchen with a child on either hip, and singing out of tune. He wanted the Shepard who only lost hide-and-seek—“And without using my cloak, you amateurs!”—when she wanted to. He wanted the Shepard who only held a gun when she was busy teaching new recruits not to shoot their own feet off. He wished the Garrus he’d been had believed her when she insisted she didn’t miss it.

“I’ll get them back,” she said, and even her voice sounded different. Harder. Every syllable clipped, as if she was giving him a report, as if she was talking about the number of hostiles on her HUD and not their stolen children. He’d forgotten she could sound like that; it had been so long.

“Shepard—”

But she ignored him, too. She spoke to the space just over his left shoulder. The way she’d always spoken to Hackett. To Sparatus. “There’s reason to believe they’ve been taken off-planet. No ransom requests, yet; your father will monitor that situation and report back to you as necessary. Naxus has one team combing through all communications they can tap into and another looking into flight logs. If there’s something to find, he’ll find it.” 

“Shepard, please. Don’t—”

_Not like this_.

“The _Normandy_ is already standing by.” Her voice cracked on the final syllable. She inhaled audibly. When she spoke again, it was as if the break had never happened at all. “I assume Alenko and I have Spectre authority on this matter, Councilor?”

The sting of her voice speaking that word was far worse than the jab of Ranix’s syringe.

“If I said no?” he managed with difficulty.

“Then I suppose Alenko would stay groundside,” she replied. “And I’d be forced to steal his ship.”

“You,” Garrus said. “White markings. Casta?”

The doctor cleared her throat. “Y-yes, sir? Dr. Casta Kandros, sir. Can I—is there something you need, sir?”

“He needs you to stop calling him ‘sir’,” Shepard said. “He hates it.” Garrus swallowed because he didn’t trust his voice not to keen if he spoke. Shepard paused. As if realizing he needed more time, she added, “Was Nyreen Kandros a relative of yours?”

“Oh,” said Casta, obviously startled. “I—yes. A cousin. I only met her a few times. She seemed nice.”

“She was a good woman. I liked her.”

Having recovered enough to speak, Garrus said, “Relocate me.”

“Sorry, sir?”

“Garrus,” said Shepard in the low, warning tone that told him she knew exactly what he was planning.

“To the _Normandy._ ”

“That is not happening, Councilor,” blustered Purple Parallel Lines. “As the senior physician in charge of your treatment—”

“You’re fired,” said Garrus. “Kandros?”

“Councilor Vakarian, sir, you cannot _fire_ me. I am the _head_ of this—”

Shepard said, “That’s going to be a ‘were’ in less than a minute.”

“You have absolutely no right—”

This time, he didn’t get to the end of his protestation because Shepard put a hand to the edge of his cowl before he could even think to stop her, jerked his purple parallel lines close to her face so hard his datapad clattered to the floor, and said, “You. Need. To. Leave. Now.”

She didn’t push him. She didn’t use any force at all. She simply released her grip on the edge of his cowl. He was the one to stumble away from her so quickly he tripped over the hem of his medical robes, falling to the ground in a clatter of limbs. No one laughed. No one helped him up. He shuffled away in disgrace.

When the door closed behind him, Kandros said, “You—you were saying?”

Solana replied for him. “My idiot brother refuses to be left behind to heal while his wife goes to, quite rightfully, beat in the brains of the assholes who took their children. My idiot brother would like you to transfer him to the medbay of the _Normandy_ immediately if not sooner, and he’s chosen you to be his Dr. Karin Chakwas stand-in, which is both a compliment and a task so daunting you should probably be shaking in your boots.”

“I…am,” admitted Kandros. “If I’m honest.”

Solana snorted. “Good. Stick with honesty. Much less likely one or the other of them will rip your head off that way. Shepard doesn’t particularly like this plan, but her unwillingness to have Garrus too far away from check-in-on distance means she’ll let my idiot brother have his way.” Solana glanced at Shepard and then turned to him. He could make out the features of her face now. Her expression was amused. Her subharmonics, however, thrummed worry. And fear. And so much guilt. “That about sum it up?”

Even though she’d referred to him as her ‘idiot brother’ more times than he thought strictly necessary, Garrus would’ve crushed his sister in a hug if they weren’t both bound to hospital beds. A very faint smile pulled at one corner of Shepard’s mouth, a hairline fracture in the unsettling mask she’d walked in wearing. A little of his own terror ebbed at the sight. He could work with a hairline fracture. He’d done it before.

“Yes,” he said. “You can bring Orange Cheek Plates. And more of whatever you gave me just now.”

Here, finally, Shepard’s hand reached out. He’d almost forgotten the feel of her hands in her armored gloves, when once it was more familiar to him than the feel of her bare skin. She brushed her fingertips along his brow. “I’m sure neither of you have done anything to deserve this,” she said. “He’s a terrible patient.” She sighed. Her hand dropped away again. “I’ll see to the arrangements on the _Normandy._ We leave in an hour.”

Garrus watched her head for the door, determined and implacable in her armor. He saw her pause. She turned and went to Solana’s side, crouched, and spoke words too soft for him to hear. Solana bent her head, nodding, then shaking it side to side, then nodding again. Slowly, tenderly, so very carefully, Shepard brought her brow to Solana’s. Solana raised a hand with a bandaged wrist to cup Shepard’s cheek.

Garrus’ throat tightened and he turned his attention back to Kandros because it felt very much like a moment too private for witnesses.


	18. Bad Dream

The first thing Rose noticed when the turian lady led her out of the dark and into the hallway was that this spaceship was nothing like the _Normandy_. The lights were too bright and warm, for one thing, and instead of metal walls and metal floors, everything was fancier. Way fancier. It was even fancier than some of the ships they sometimes sent her dad on when he was working. She kept her hands at her sides because what she wanted to do was reach out and see if the panels on the walls were really wood. It wasn’t too hard to break wood. Or burn it. She could feel the turian lady’s eyes on her, and she didn’t want to give her any clues about what she was thinking.

Mom was real good at not telling too much on her face. Sometimes Rose tried to be like her, but mostly she wasn’t very good at it. Tyrra was better. Dad thought he was great, but Mom always saw through it, which made him laugh and say things like _it’s always a competition with you, Shepard_ in the exact same voice he used when he said _I love you_.

“You’re awfully quiet now, little klixen. I hope you’re not plotting a foolish escape. Amusing as it was to see poor Jannus humiliated, it won’t happen again.”

Rose said nothing, not even to argue about using her name. She was too busy counting. She started with steps, but the numbers were too big to remember. Instead, she tried to keep track of turns. That was hard, too. It felt like they were going around and around in circles, and it made her feel funny, the way spinning and spinning with a blindfold on made her feel funny when she took it off after and the world was topsy-turvy. All the wood panels looked the same. All the doors looked like they could lead back into the dark room.

Besides, klixens could breathe fire like dragons or something. On a ship with this much wood, maybe being a klixen was a good thing.

Rose didn’t see any other turians, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think this lady and the turian she’d hurt in the dark room were the only people on board. Lots of times the _Normandy_ looked quiet, too, but there were always a lot of people doing a lot of different jobs. It was probly the middle of the night or something, when almost everyone was sleeping.

Rose wished she knew how to climb into this ship’s secret passages and ducts and maintenance tunnels the way she’d learned to do on the _Normandy_. Then she could disappear and knock the secret knock against the ceilings or floors or walls until she heard Tyrra knock back, and then they could just hide until Mom and Dad came to get them.

Rose had counted six turns—though she was almost certain the last two were repeats—when the turian lady laughed. “Oh, you’re counting. Aren’t you a funny little thing?”

Even though lots of people told Rose she was funny, this time the words didn’t sound very nice at all. “I’d rather be funny than mean.”

“And you think I’m mean?” Rose hated the turian’s laugh pretty much more than she’d ever hated the sound of anything except Reapers and babies crying to death. “I could have had you killed, you know. You understand that, don’t you? I could have left your frail little body for them to find. That would have been mean. I’m not mean.”

“Okay,” said Rose, rolling her eyes and forgetting, just for a second, how much the turian scared her. “You’re right. You’re _so_ nice. I’m _so sorry._ Nice people always threaten to kill kids.”

“Sarcasm,” the turian replied. “Charming. Well?” She gestured vaguely at the door. “Here we are.”

“If this is a trick—”

Rose was pretty sure that particular flick of mandibles meant the woman was either disgusted or annoyed. “Yes, I took you halfway across the ship to trick you because I have absolutely nothing better to do with my time. See? I can do sarcasm, too.”

Rose thought she was about to get smacked on the head when the turian leaned forward, but she only reached past and settled her palm against the door’s lock. It flashed red once, then went green and opened silently.

Inside the room was even fancier than the hallways, and it was a lot nicer than the dark room. Rose tried to take everything in at once, and mostly just managed to see that one wall had a big window looking out into space with the pretty shimmers that Joker said meant they were traveling faster than light. The walls in here were wood, too, and draped with heavy, beautiful cloth. Turians liked cloth; she’d learned that pretty quick. There was a desk and a vidscreen and food on a low table that made Rose’s stomach growl even though she knew it was dextro and she couldn’t eat it. In one corner, even more curtains and stuff hung around a big turian bed, much bigger than the one Tyrra had at home.

Tyrra.

“You said—” Rose began.

The curtains around the bed shifted. Tyrra’s head came out through a couple of panels, blinking and sleepy. Rose was so happy to see her, she thought her heart would explode. She took a step forward, but the lady’s hand curled around her shoulder to make her stay. Her talons were filed real sharp, and painted shiny gold. They made Rose shiver and hold very, very still.

“What is she doing here?” Tyrra asked.

“Um,” said Rose, “she’s the one who kidnapped us. I made her let me out of the dark room. You’re not in the Bad Place, anymore, Tyr. That’s good; I was so—”

But Tyrra did not meet Rose’s eyes. She did not smile or stumble out of bed to wrap her in the big hug Rose wanted so badly. Her blue gaze didn’t even seem to see Rose at all. She looked directly at the tall turian lady.

“You said I wouldn’t have to take care of her. You said it was all over now.”

Again the stupid turian lady laughed her stupid mean laugh, only this time it felt like a hundred thousand knives against the inside of Rose’s head. “She said she wanted her sister.”

Tyrra pushed back the heavy curtains. Tyrra didn’t have any dirt on her face or her hands. She wore clean clothes that looked as expensive as everything else on the ship. She looked like a turian princess, and Rose was almost jealous, except everything was all wrong, and she didn’t know why. Rose’s bottom lip began to tremble the longer Tyrra ignored her. Everything felt weird, like she was coming down with a fever, or like this was a bad, bad dream. She wanted to make her voice work again, but she couldn’t. Not as long as Tyrra wouldn’t look at her.

She crossed her arms and pinched the soft skin of her upper arm as hard as she could. Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t scream. When she didn’t wake up, she pinched herself again and twisted hard. This time, she couldn’t hold in her whimper.

Tyrra crossed the room, close enough for Rose to smell the clean, sleepy smell of her, and helped herself to some of the food on the table.

Rose swallowed, not feeling hungry at all anymore, not when everything else in her stomach was sick and twisting. “But Tyr,” she said, in a voice so tiny she barely even recognized it. Her arm ached, and her blood pounded in her ears, louder than her own voice; not as loud as the turian lady’s laugh. Rose didn’t know what was supposed to come after _but Tyr_. Something. But everything felt wrong and messed up and _but Tyr_ didn’t feel like enough.

Tyrra swallowed her food and turned to face them again, mandibles pulled tight to her face, arms crossed in the kind of irritation she only showed when Rose really messed around with her stuff. “Fine,” she said. “I don’t care. There’s lots of room.”

“It’s only for a little while, Tyrsta.”

“Her name’s _Tyrra_ ,” Rose protested even though the talons were still holding onto her. “You don’t know anything.”

Of course the turian lady laughed. Of course she did. Rose didn’t want to cry in front of her, but big stupid tears welled up and fell out anyway. The lady ran her too-sharp talons through Rose’s dirty hair and then flicked her hand, like she’d touched something yucky. “Now that you have some time alone, perhaps Tyrsta will tell you some of the things _you_ don’t know, little klixen.”

Because this was the worst bad dream Rose had ever dreamed, when the turian lady crossed to Tyrra, Tyrra turned her face up, accepting the press of brow to brow. Rose looked at the floor because she didn’t want to see it. She stared at her feet until she heard the door close and lock with a soft beep.

“Okay,” Rose said, lifting her eyes and finding herself staring at the back of her sister’s head. “Okay, she’s gone now, Tyr, you can stop now. You can be yourself again now, okay?”

“I’m going back to sleep,” Tyrra said, almost like they were strangers, almost like they hadn’t spent so many nights curled up together waiting for the war to end, waiting for a home, waiting. “You can have the bed if you want.”

“It’s a turian bed.”

“It’s a turian ship. What do you expect?”

“Why are you being like this, Tyr? Did they make you? Did they hurt you? Why did you let that lady—”

“If you don’t want the bed, you can have the couch.”

“Why can’t we both—”

“Enough, Rose!” Tyrra snapped, finally looking at her, but not the way Rose wanted her to. She was really, _really_ angry. Not pretend angry. Rose shrank away, almost afraid Tyrra was going to hit her. “This is where I belong.”

“But _why_?” Rose started to cry then, for really. Big, ugly, snotty tears. In between sobs, she pleaded, “Why’d she call you a different name? Why’d you let her kiss you goodnight? Why’d you let them put me in the dark room all by myself? Why’d she say there were things I don’t know that you could tell me?”

Through the mess of her tears, Rose saw Tyrra shake her head. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re just a little kid. Just—take my bed, okay?”

“No! I won’t! I’ll sleep on the stupid _floor_. I don’t want _anything_ from you or that turian or this stupid ship. I want Mom and Dad!”

“Your parents are dead, Rose,” Tyrra said, almost gently, except the words were wrong like everything else. “Just like mine. It’s time to stop pretending.”

This was worse than if Tyrra had just pushed her. It was worse than _anything_. Rose wrapped her arms around herself tight tight tight because she felt like she was going to break into a hundred million pieces if she didn’t hold herself together. She felt like fire or lightning was just gonna burst out of her skin and blow the whole ship up. She almost wished it would. Tyrra just stood there, _looking_ at her, not moving. Tears still dripped from Rose’s chin, and her hair hurt and everything hurt and nothing was okay. “I _hate_ you!” she screamed, because she wanted to so _bad_ and she didn’t. “I hate you I hate you _I hate you_!”

Tyrra nodded. Just nodded.

Then she turned around and went back to bed, disappearing behind all the dumb turian curtains. Rose ignored the couch and marched over to the farthest corner, curling up under the desk and pulling the chair across like a wall she could hide behind. A few minutes later, Tyrra turned out the lights.

The room went as black as the dark room. Rose wrapped her arms around her knees and let her tears fall without trying to stop them. She counted turns in her head and tried to make a picture in her brain of how all the hallways fit together. Finally, the tears stopped. The dry, heaving, hiccuping pain in her chest eased. She remembered the way old Tyrra used to stroke her hair and her back to make her fall asleep, humming the way only turians, with their subvocals, could.

It was so real she almost thought she felt a hand on her head, a brow swiftly pressed to her brow, the softness of a blanket tucked around her.

_Finally,_ she thought, _a good dream,_ and slept.


	19. Shell Game

Stepping into her old life felt like pulling a dress out of the back of the closet expecting the hips to be too tight or the zipper to stick, and finding instead that it still fit perfectly. Even though she’d once loved the dress, once thought about nothing except wearing the dress, now Shepard wasn’t sure she liked it much. Her taste was different. She wanted colors instead of black, white, and red. She wanted something comfortable enough for chasing her kids in, for piggy-back rides, for crawling around in the dirt.

Maybe her old life, her old armor, wasn’t like a dress at all. Maybe that was too innocent a metaphor. Maybe it was more like someone almost three years sober picking up a drink and pounding it back in one pull, already reaching for another. Maybe the drink tasted good. Maybe the drink tasted _too_ good. The weight of the pistol at her hip was good; the weight of the rifle on her back even better.

Far more dangerous than a dress.

More dangerous even than a drink.

She shook her head. Her hair was too tightly bound; it gave her a headache, but the headache was necessary. The pain kept her focused. The pain kept her looking forward, thinking forward, instead of letting her imagination run wild in directions that would only leave her sobbing in the shower, pounding a helpless fist into a tile wall that only broke first because Cerberus had done too good a job rebuilding her bones.

She still bled, though. Still hurt. They’d never been able to pull that out of her.

She put on her armor, her guns. She interrogated suspects who flinched away from her and spoke too quickly. Her husband did not die.

It took no time at all to mobilize the _Normandy._ With concerned eyes, Alenko deferred to her as he’d always done, and when she tried—only nominally—to protest, he insisted on the grounds she was both senior Spectre and Alliance admiral, outranking him twice over.

She didn’t point out that Spectres didn’t have rank. She didn’t remind him that admirals sat behind desks and didn’t run ground-team Marine missions.

No one said, “Hey, Shepard, you think maybe you’re a little too close to this? You think maybe you should let someone else take point?”

She almost wished someone would, but she wasn’t going to make them. She sure as hell wasn’t going to say it for them, not with so much at stake.

Joker almost said it. She could see it in his frown, the uneasy set of his shoulders, the way he met her eyes and held them too long. Then, though, instead of the words she expected, he only said, “We’ll get them back,” in a tone that reminded her of every damn thing Joker had ever lost.

Including, that one time, her.

Somewhere in the back of her head, away from the planning and the focus and the step-by-step precision necessary for the mission, a mother screamed and beat more than her hands bloody.

She nodded, dropping a hand lightly onto his shoulder. A little of the tension eased. A little of hers did, too. He still hadn’t replaced the hat he’d given Rose; the silver in his hair seemed even more pronounced than it had only a week ago.

“We have a course yet?” he asked.

“Between Naxus’ intelligence and the information I was able to extricate from the survivors of the attack on Garrus, we have a best guess. They say they’re part of a revived faction of Facinus, out of Taetrus.”

“They say?” asked Kaidan, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Shepard stamped down the unkind thought that said Kaidan stood in what should have been Garrus’ position, borrowing one of Garrus’ gestures. “That sounds like you don’t believe them.”

Shepard dismissed this with a cutting gesture. “Taetrus was in rough shape _before_ the Reapers hit and used the destruction as a galaxy-wide press release. What few survivors remain are still shifting rubble and rebuilding from the ground up. People working that hard that constantly don’t have time to foment political unrest.” She grimaced. “It doesn’t matter where they’re really from, not right now. It’s a shell game. Taking the kids was them putting the ball under the shell and betting me—us—double or nothing. We have to look like we’re falling for the hustle.”

Joker frowned. “The Mactare system then?”

“I suspect we’ll hear from the kidnappers before they let us get that far, but yeah.” She lifted a hand as if to push it through loose hair before remembering she couldn’t. The hand fell heavily back to her side. “I’ll be in the medbay. Let me know when the inevitable call comes in.”

#

Shepard had a countdown clock running in her head. First, it had been hours since the girls were taken; now it was up into days. Four. And thirteen hours. She’d slept a dozen hours altogether, no more. She ate only because Kaidan threw a meal replacement bar at her every time he saw her; Garrus’ doing, no doubt. Jack showed up with caffeine at regular intervals, looking like she wanted to blow a hole in a wall. Or a head. Shepard appreciated both the coffee and the anger; she couldn’t vent hers, but she could damn well live vicariously through Jack.

While the four days and thirteen hours had done Garrus a world of good—once the initial nightmarish period was done with, and she couldn’t think about _that_ , either—Shepard had to shut down the part of her brain that couldn’t stop wondering how much damage could’ve been done to her kids in those hundred and nine hours, or more than the tiles of a bathroom wall were going to end up broken.

She was off about the timing of the expected call; it came after they’d reached the Mactare system, but before they’d hit Taetrus’ orbit. Four days, fifteen hours.

She didn’t run to the QEC, though she wanted to. Garrus, in a wheelchair pushed by Dr. Kandros, beat her there, but he didn’t enter. He sat just outside the doorway, close enough to hear without being seen.

When you were trying to out-hustle a hustler, it was better to look weaker than you were. His hand reached for hers as she moved past him; she paused long enough to kiss his brow and give his fingers a gentle squeeze.

Four days, fifteen hours, thirty-two minutes. Best guess.

Falling into parade rest felt like coming home. She was centered by the time the unfamiliar turian visage crystallized in front of her. “Thank the Spirits,” said the turian woman, immediately putting Shepard’s teeth on edge. Too much. “I’m Matta Casarus, of the trading ship _Enixus_. We’ve been trying to find your frequency for hours.”

A lie, of course. _Shuffle the shells. Follow the ball._

“This is about my daughters?”

The eyes were wide and guileless, projecting innocence. Too much, too much. “As soon as they told us who they were, we turned around and started back to Palaven, but there’s been so much hostile activity in this sector. Raiders, you know. Of course _you_ know. I’m sorry.” The flicker of mandible said _don’t look here_. A good con-artist. Not good enough.

Shepard had to hand it to her, the woman spun an interesting story. So many details. Too many. A routine trading run from Palaven to Aephus; a distressed ship; rescuing the girls from raiders or slavers—always a market for young children, of course, and the chaos and power vacuum left by the war had only emboldened the bastards—and trying desperately to return them to their parents.

The woman’s subharmonics caught on the word _parents_ , and Shepard didn’t think it was intentional. It told her more than all the rest of the details of the fabricated story combined.

She forced herself to nod and smile as if she believed each and every one.

“I’d like to speak with them, please,” replied Shepard. Chin up, shoulders back, hands clasped behind her back. _What do you need me to do?_ “I’m sure you can understand. I need to see them. I need to know they’re okay.”

Tyrra appeared a moment later, her chin up and shoulders back, too. _Brave._ Shepard noted the way Matta Casarus—whoever she really was—left one hand on her daughter’s shoulder, and the shoulder stayed frozen beneath it. _Scared._

It was a one-two punch, where overwhelming relief hit first, but worry went for the kidneys after. “You okay, sweetheart? Where’s your sister?”

“Sleeping,” Tyrra replied, a little too quickly. “She gets tired.”

A lie, small and undetectable to anyone unfamiliar with Rose’s boundless energy. Rose didn’t do tired. She did _full-tilt_ right until she hit _passed out_.

_Shuffle the shells. Follow the ball. Don’t look away._

“I’ll be there soon. I will always come for you, no matter what. You know that. Matta seems nice. I’m sure she’ll take good care of you.”

Shepard watched the hand on Tyrra’s shoulder, but the blue static of the QEC made subtlety hard to see. Perhaps the fingers tightened a little, perhaps they didn’t. Tyrra said, “We didn’t know what happened after the car crash. We were in a dark room for a while, and then Matta came. She’s been very nice. I have a big turian bed and they gave me new clothes.”

“That’s enough, dear one,” said Matta’s voice in the instant before Tyrra’s image was replaced. “They’ve both been left so exhausted by the ordeal. We’re doing the best we can.”

Shepard nodded, not at the words, but at the way Matta’s subharmonics hadn’t been lying when she said _dear one._

“Please, forward us your coordinates and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

Matta inclined her head. “Certainly. We wouldn’t say no to an escort back to Palaven, if you’re so inclined. We’ve already taken so many risks. We’re hardly a warship, and with raiders about…”

“Of course,” said Shepard. “It’s the least we can do.”

Left suddenly alone in the QEC, her careful posture collapsed and she leaned forward onto the console, head bowed between arms she had to lock straight to keep her whole body from trembling. It took several deep breaths for her to calm her terror, her rage. When she lifted her head, Garrus had already wheeled himself into the room and was watching her carefully, face lit by the golden glow of his omni-tool.

His Council-grade omni-tool.

Amazing what perks a Councilor got, when tech was handed out.

“Liara. You get all that?”

“I did,” came Liara’s voice through Garrus’ omni-tool, just a little tinny.

“I want to know who she really is. I want to know what she had for breakfast. I want to know what perfume she wears. I want to know the names of everyone she’s ever spoken to when she thought no one was listening. Most of all, I want to know why she’s got the kind of grudge against me that made her take my kids.”

“All that and more, Shepard, I promise,” Liara said, with gentleness so close to pity Shepard wanted to scream. Or cry.

She could afford neither.

“It’s a trap,” said Garrus, once Liara had signed off. “There were no pirates.”

“I know.”

“But you’re going to walk into it anyway?”

The slight curve of her lips didn’t feel much like a smile, and Garrus was obviously not placated by it. “I’m going to _spring_ it.”

“Semantics, Shepard.”

“We both know it’s the best way to neutralize the threat.”

He sighed. “You’re going to make me play you in this little scene, aren’t you? Complete with warnings about going off half-cocked, underestimating an unknown enemy, and not considering all angles before jumping into a situation with guns blazing? Sound about right? Please don’t make me bring up Aratoht.”

Shepard crossed to him and knelt beside the chair, cupping his face gently between her palms. His tone might have been wry, but the worry in his expression was palpable, and she honestly wasn’t sure if she was taking comfort from him or giving it. His mandibles trembled. “This isn’t Aratoht,” she said, though even the word still tasted bitter on her tongue. “I have no reason to trust a single word out of this woman’s mouth. Let her believe I’ve been taken in. Let her believe she has the upper hand. I’ll use it against her. We will.”

“Unless that’s what she wants you to think. Wants you to do.” Garrus sighed again, more deeply, and scrubbed his palms against his thighs. “I don’t like it, Shepard. There’s something here we’re not seeing.”

“Liara’s intel—”

“Will come too late, and you know it.” His mandibles flicked, distraught. “We’re too close to this. You know we are.”

“I know we are. But we’re who they’ve got, Garrus. This Matta Casarus has put her cards on the table. If we don’t go all in, she’s got the girls. She could—you know what she could do. We don’t have the luxury of time. We don’t have the luxury of waiting.”

“I know,” he said. _Shuffle the shells. Follow the ball. Follow the ball._ “I know. But she knows that, too. Don’t let yourself think, even for a minute, she doesn’t.”

_Don’t look away._


	20. FUBAR

As soon as the bad turian lady came and collected Tyrra—without acknowledging Rose in her little hidey-hole of blankets under the desk—Rose started the game of hide-and-seek she’d been itching for. She was really good at hide-and-seek. This time, she wasn’t looking for a hidden person, but a hidden panel or vent or _something._ She knew that, in a spaceship, all the air had to come from somewhere. Air came through vents.

When Joker explained it to her back on the _Normandy_ , he had her hold out her arm. With the flat of his hand, he brushed his palm down her skin. “This is like the outside of the ship. Nothing gets in, right?” She nodded. Then, with a fingertip, he traced the blue-green lines underneath, running all the way from her wrist to her elbow. “Inside every ship, you’ve got the guts. Life support, circuitry, electronics, all kinds of important stuff. That’s what keeps things running. They’re all connected, and most of the time, you don’t pay attention to them. Only when something goes FUBAR, uh, _wrong_ , do you have to worry about what the veins and arteries are doing.” Then he’d showed her all kinds of cool maps and pictures that showed not just the room with all the bunkbeds that she slept in, or the big room that was her mom and dad’s, or the one with the star map in it, but all the squiggly lines that meant _power_ and _air_ and even _toilet waste_ , since apparently peeing into space wasn’t a good thing.

Tyrra’s room definitely had air, it definitely had power, and it definitely had a bathroom. Rose started there first, because it was small and because she’d have a good excuse if the bad lady came back right away for some reason, like when Mom _always_ forgot _something_ in the mornings when she was taking them to school. Usually her coffee cup. She always went back for the coffee cup. It was one Rose and Tyrra painted themselves, with their handprints and hearts and some kind of weird turian butterfly things and Earth butterflies, too.

Rose kind of wished they’d never left home at all, now. At least back then she knew where all the windows and doors were, and Tyrra was still her sister, and no mean turians kept saying her real parents were dead, which she knew _obviously_ ‘cause she wasn’t dumb, but she didn’t need to be reminded of it _all the time_.

The bathroom looked like the whole stupid place was made of one big piece of metal, just shaped differently, like putting tinfoil over the dinner leftovers. The toilet shape connected to the wall shape, which connected to a small sink shape, and then just more flat stupid wall. The shower was just holes in the ceiling she couldn’t even reach. Even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t even have fit her arm into the bottom of the toilet. She kicked the wall hard, which hurt her foot so bad she couldn’t help the tears that welled up in her eyes, and that was stupid too.

Peering out into the main room, she saw she was still alone. With her foot throbbing and no one to kiss it better, she thought about just breaking things. The vidscreen, maybe, or pulling all the curtains off of Tyrra’s bed. Instead, she crept around the whole room on her hands and knees, looking behind the furniture—most of it was bolted to the wall—and digging her little fingertips into any cracks she could find. She pushed aside carpets and ran her palms over the floor panels. She knocked on them, wishing she understood what the dull echoes meant.

The more she searched; the more her fingers ached and bruised and even started to bleed a bit when her nails tore; the more her foot began to throb and swell inside her environmental suit; the more she found nothing, nothing, and _more nothing_ , the angrier Rose got. She couldn’t even be sad anymore. She was done crying like a baby expecting to be picked up and rocked to sleep. She was mad about the floor and the walls and the ceilings and all the stupid fabric and Tyrra and the turians who were too dumb to realize they were picking a fight with the biggest heroes in the whole _universe_.

And she still couldn’t find a _stupid vent._

Rose grabbed two handfuls of the fabric hanging around Tyrra’s bed and pulled as hard as she could. She heard it tear and it should have made her feel better, but like kicking the wall, it didn’t. She pulled harder, but she wasn’t strong enough to pull it down completely and she wasn’t tall enough and she wasn’t big enough and—

The bowl on the table holding the turian fruit that she couldn’t eat but that smelled so good… shattered. Even though she didn’t touch it. And even though it was made of some kind of hard plastic that shouldn’t have been able to break at all. Shock dulled her anger. Slowly, like she was approaching a dog she didn’t know, Rose edged toward the remains of the bowl. The fruit was all smashed up on the wall and the floor and even, a little bit, on the ceiling she couldn’t reach even when she stood on the tallest chair.

Somehow, she knew she really, really, _really_ didn’t want the bad turian lady to see what had happened.

She cleaned up the pieces of the bowl, first. She could always tell them she’d been throwing the fruit because she was mad, but she wouldn’t be able to explain the rest. Tyrra’s bed went all the way to the floor, so she couldn’t just push the pieces underneath the way she would have done at home. Instead, she grabbed one of the blankets and balled all the pieces up inside it, and then pushed it under her own little desk bed like it was just a pillow or something.

The pieces were sharp. Like the knives she was only allowed to use if Mom or Dad was watching her carefully. At the last minute, she rescued the biggest, sharpest piece and pushed it into the big outer pocket on the side of her envirosuit’s right leg, where she usually kept snacks. Her stomach growled, as if to remind her how stingy the stupid turians were with their human-safe rations.

Just as she was starting to get angry all over again, the door swished open. Rose tried not to look as guilty as she felt. Tyrra walked in first, her eyes immediately going to the fruit smears on the wall. She looked away, but not quickly enough.

“Had a temper tantrum, I see,” said the turian lady. “Not that I would expect better behavior from a savage little klixen.”

Rose jammed her teeth together and thought about bunnies and kittens and the songs they sang at school because she was afraid if she didn’t, someone would mention the missing bowl.

The turian laughed when Rose didn’t reply and turned her back, dismissing her. It would have made Rose mad before, but now she was just relieved.

“You did well, Tyrsta. It won’t be long now.”

Tyrra nodded obediently.

“I’ll come for you again when you’re needed.”

Again, Tyrra’s weird, blank nod. Rose made a face the turian lady couldn’t see.

Without looking back at Rose again, the bad lady left. Tyrra went to her bed and got another sheet, which she used to cover the table and the worst of the fruit smears, hiding them. Hiding that the bowl was missing, too. The room smelled bad now, sticky and unpleasant, like something that was dying. Or already dead. Rose wished she didn’t remember that smell. The piece of bowl in her pocket felt heavy as a hundred bricks.

“Why do you let her talk to you like that?” Rose asked, even though she’d made herself a thousand promises she was never going to talk to Tyrra again. “Like you’re her pet or something.”

Rose didn’t expect an answer, so she was surprised when Tyrra lifted her chin, mandibles tight to her cheeks, and said, “I’m not like you, Rose. You know that.”

“Did she tell you that, too? ‘Cause Mom and Dad have never said anything like that to you, I’d _know,_ and they wouldn’t anyway. They love you just the same as they love me and they never talk to us the way that stupid turian lady does.”

Tyrra sighed. “She’s not stupid. You shouldn’t make that mistake.”

“She’s not smarter than Mom and Dad.”

Rose almost thought Tyrra was going to say something else, but she didn’t. She just turned away. Again. And crawled into bed. Again.

#

The stink of too-sweet, rotting fruit was still thick when they came for her. Tyrra was halfway out of bed when Jannus and Elida—or maybe it was Redana, the room was still dark—strode through the open door, but instead of waiting for her, they headed straight for Rose. Jannus grabbed Rose’s blanket-wrapped legs and pulled her out from under the desk hard enough that Tyrra heard Rose’s head smack the floor. Rose squirmed and tried to kick, but the blankets stopped her.

Tyrra should never have given them to her.

It was all going wrong.

A moment later, Rose hung between them like a—like a klixen. About to be roasted for dinner. Jannus slapped a piece of electrical tape over Rose’s mouth, cutting off her cries and some curses that would have made Aunti—that would have made Jack proud.

“What are you doing?” Tyrra asked, almost forgetting to sound bored, almost forgetting to sound like she didn’t care.

“Boss’ orders.”

Jannus’ mandible was bandaged. It made his words sound strange. Tyrra wondered what had happened to it. Sleepiness made her thoughts sluggish, and shaking her head only made it hurt more. She thought maybe they were putting something in her food. Or piping it in through the air ducts.

Or maybe she really was just giving up.

“I want to talk to my aunt.”

The word stuck in her craw, but Tyrra managed to say it without flinching. Without her stomach turning upside down and dumping her dinner all over the carpeted floor.

“If she wanted to talk to you, she’d be here, wouldn’t she?” Jannus showed too many teeth when he smiled.

Elida—it was Elida, not Redana—grimaced. “We’ll tell her, but we have to take the human now.”

“Why?”

Jannus’ eyes narrowed. “What’s it matter to you?”

Bored. Indifferent. “It doesn’t. I just want to know why you had to wake me up in the middle of the night to do it. I’m tired.”

Even in the dim light, it hurt Tyrra to meet Rose’s wide, terrified gaze over the stark black of the tape across her mouth.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

_She’s not stupid._

Crossing her arms over her chest like a petulant kid, Tyrra shifted off the carpet so the talons on her feet scraped audibly on the bare metal floor. _Long, short, long,_ she tapped, in a makeshift approximation of the secret knock she and Rose always used to ask permission to come into each other’s rooms. _Short, short, short, long._

And again, as they dragged Rose toward the door.

Again, before the door closed behind them.

_You shouldn’t make that mistake._


	21. Pantomime

When she installed herself on the flight deck, Joker only nodded and offered a brief grunt of greeting. If she hadn’t already known how distraught he was, that grunt would’ve been a dead giveaway. His hands flew over the haptic interface, adjusting their approach vector just enough—she hoped—to give them a moment of surprise. Kaidan sat at the station to Joker’s right, manning communications. For a moment, she saw the slightly-different cockpit of a different _Normandy_ and half-expected the voice of a dead man to summon her over the comms.

Instead, Joker hissed an expletive that would have shocked even Jack and said, “We’ve got a situation.”

She leaned over his shoulder, scanning the stars. _There_. The ship was small against the vastness of space, looking like a toy discarded by a child when something newer and shinier came along.

No.

She couldn’t think about children.

“Kaidan?”

“Sorry, Shepard.” His hands were moving now, too. “No—there. It’s sending out an SOS. Turian frequency. Pretty weak.”

“Is it the _Enixus_?”

She already knew, though. Kaidan’s nod only confirmed what her gut was screaming.

They drew near enough to see the atmosphere venting into the dark from a gash in the ship’s starboard side.

“Life signs?”

“Too much interference.”

She remained locked in parade rest because what she really wanted to do was punch something. A wall. The piece of equipment whose news was always bad. “Of course.” When she had the urge for violence under control, she said, “Bring us in quiet, Joker. I’m going over.”

Kaidan turned in the seat, fixing her with his dark, too-perceptive gaze. “ _We_ are.”

“Everyone likes to forget my background. N7 Infiltrator, remember? In and out, no biotic explosions necessary.”

But Kaidan was already rising, expression as close to mutinous as she’d ever seen it. “Garrus said you’d try and pull something like this, you know. I thought you’d consider how long you’ve been _off active duty_ and go with common sense.”

“If you’re suggesting I stay—”

He held up a hand to stop her. She added his face to her list of things she’d consider punching, though his words went some little way to redeeming him. “I wouldn’t dare, Shepard. I mean that. But we have no idea what’s going on over there. Don’t go in alone.”

Joker hunched in his seat as if pretending a Spectre showdown wasn’t happening above his head. Shepard sighed. “You gonna question every decision I make, Alenko?”

“Only the stupid ones. Ma’am.”

A very, very faint smile pulled at one corner of her mouth. “Fair enough. Suit up, Alenko. And find Jack.”

“And Garrus?”

She shook her head. Kaidan winced. “I’ll talk to him.”

#

“You’ve got to be _kidding me_.”

“You almost died a few—”

“Don’t,” he snapped.

Shepard crossed her armored arms over her chest, meeting her husband glare for glare even though she had to crane her neck a bit to do it.

“Do you honestly want me to pull rank here, Shepard? Is that it?”

“No,” she said. “I want you to run the op from the ship.”

“You want me to sit on the sidelines. They’re my _kids_.” The way his voice broke nearly broke her resolve; she had to look away.

“Garrus,” she said, softly.

“Don’t _Garrus_ me. Not about this.”

“Fine.” She brought the heels of her hands up to her eyes and pressed hard enough to momentarily see stars. “I need you on my six.”

“That’s more like it.”

Lowering her hands, she said, “That’s here. On the ship. Running the op. Waiting for Liara’s intel. And manning the Thanix as only you can if the bastards try and pull something that needs the big guns. Which they probably will.”

“Because this is obviously a trap.”

“Obviously.”

He shook his head, but not in disagreement. That fight had gone out of him the second she said _on my six_. He took a step toward her. She took two, wrapping her arms tight around him. One of his hands cupped the back of her head gently. “I hate it when you’re right.”

Shepard snorted. “Yeah, well, the feeling’s mutual.”

“You told Alenko you were going in alone?”

She said nothing. Didn’t have to.

He brought the side of his face to the top of her head and nuzzled it. “Bring our kids home, Shepard. I’ll watch your back.”

#

Shepard wasn’t sure what it said about her that all her nerves and anger and panic _settled_ the second her boots hit the floor. The weight of her gun grounded her. Despite Kaidan’s—and even Garrus’—fears, having a mission with a clear objective focused her. Get in, get out. Rescue mission. Keep a low profile.

She’d done dozens of these over the years.

And Aratoht didn’t count.

They’d entered through the gash in the side of the ship instead of aiming for the airlock; no use announcing themselves before they had to. She gestured silently, and Kaidan arced out to her left, omni already up and scanning, in case proximity could provide better readings. Behind his mask, his brows furrowed. She didn’t need the shake of his head to know he’d had no luck.

She clipped her pistol to her side and peered through the scope of her rifle. The thermal scope picked up Kaidan and Jack’s signatures, but couldn’t see through the walls.

Good walls, then. She frowned. Traders usually dropped their credits protecting the _exterior_ of their ships; having the kind of interior walls that could defy an even more top-of-the-line thermal scope than one could currently find even on the blackest of markets—unless they, too, were personal friends of Solana Vakarian—smacked of paranoia. At the very least.

She brought up her own omni, then, and ran the scanning program that had gone not only through Solana, but through Tali and Garrus and herself, as well. Like the scope, it read the current room clearly—the surveillance camera over the door was obvious; the three different bugs running on completely different frequencies, less so—but everything outside was dampened.

Using signals instead of words, even on their private frequencies, Shepard directed Kaidan to one side of the door and Jack to the other.

Shepard knew damn well that her omni-tool was fitted with the best tech money (and connections) could buy, and then some.

It still took her decryption program an agonizingly long time to crack the door’s code.

_Definitely_ a trap.

_Definitely_ not just traders.

Shepard activated her cloak the moment the door began to slide open, waiting for the immediate attack that never came. After a slow count of five, she ducked into the corridor. Lights flickered above, casting half the hallway into stark shadows, but no one waited for them. No shots pinged off her shields. Kaidan and Jack followed as soon as her tactical cloak shimmered and vanished. Once again, scanning revealed nothing. An empty hallway; walls that kept their secrets close.

No cover.

No debris at all.

Her frown deepened. Any attack that could leave damage like the destruction of the room behind them should’ve had more of an effect elsewhere. Even with impenetrable walls. She began flicking through frequencies until she found the one the ship was using to send out its weak cry for help. After listening to the generic SOS three times, her earpiece crackled. Music, loud enough to cause pain, blasted. Fighting the instinct to shut it off completely, she turned it down as much as she could.

The melody was familiar. Human, definitely. Something full of pomp and military bravado.

She went cold when she recognized it.

A very particular anthem. One rarely heard. One she’d heard twice. Once after Elysium. Once after—after everything that had happened later.

One she’d tried to avoid hearing both times.

They played it when they bestowed the Star of Terra. Only then.

Jack touched her arm; Shepard shook her head, tapping the side of her helmet and signaling them to wait. She didn’t miss the look Jack and Kaidan exchanged.

When the last triumphant note roared and faded, the desperate, wailing cry of a child replaced it.

_Her_ child.

“Rose? _Rose_?”

But Rose wasn’t the child who answered. With the screaming still raw in the background, Tyrra, breathless, subharmonics practically screaming her terror, said, “Sh-shepard? Shepard? Is that—you have to—they’re going to—she promised she’d give Rose back—I don’t know—I don’t know what they’re _doing_ to her!”

“Shh, honey,” Shepard said. She didn’t brush off Jack’s hand this time, though she did signal for Kaidan to keep his eyes on the scanner. “Where are you? I’m here. I’m coming to get you.”

Tyrra began to speak again, but was replaced Matta Casarus’ harsh whisper. “Admiral Shepard? Thank the Spirits. They’ve got us pinned—”

“Cut the shit,” Shepard snapped. “I’m here. Just like you wanted. Walked into your elaborate little pantomime, just like you wanted. If you don’t release my daughters _immediately_ , I will kill you. Do you understand me? I will put a bullet in every body that stands between me and them. Without mercy.”

Casarus’ voice changed at once. Cold, smooth. Too smooth. “This is how Earth breeds heroes, then? I prefer turian ones. They understand honor.”

Shepard inhaled sharply. “Is that what this is? You’re torturing my kid to prove some kind of point? I don’t know what the fuck I ever did to you, lady, but if—”

“You killed someone important to me. As important to me as these foundlings are to you. _More important_.”

Her stomach twisted. She ignored it. “Then take it up with me. They’re innocent. _They are innocent._ Let them go and you can have me. No contest. No fight.”

Even the woman’s laugh was cold. Bitter as the wind on Noveria. “So noble. No wonder they love you.” Casarus sighed. As if she was _bored_. With Rose _screaming_. “You said it yourself, Shepard. It’s pantomime. It’s theatre. Time to give the audience what they want.”

Before she could do more than open her mouth to reply, the line went dead. Rose’s cries stopped so abruptly, Shepard clapped her hand to the side of her head, as if this would bring her closer, tell her where to go.

“What the fuck, Shepard,” Jack breathed.

“Can we get a message back to the _Normandy_?”

Kaidan shook his head.

Shepard swallowed, shuffling plans in her head and rejecting them before they could finish forming. “Then we move. She’s already proven she’ll hurt the children. We have to hit them harder and faster than they expect.” Shepard lifted her Widow. “Jack. Point. Don’t hold back. Make them show their faces so I can remove them.”


	22. Trap

Garrus’ visor counted the time since the airlock doors had closed behind Shepard. When the team’s comms went dead, he chalked it up to the amount of interference the ship was giving off. Not surprising. Unpleasant, though. A lot could happen in 16 minutes and 46 seconds. And he hated being in the dark.

To keep himself from worrying,he kept his gaze fixed on the sensor readouts, waiting for the inevitable. As he and Shepard had discussed, the whole damned thing _screamed_ trap like Omega’s flashing neon signs pointed to bars and dancing asari. He just wasn’t sure where it would come from.

He was so plugged into the ship that he was already on his way to the QEC before Joker pinged him to let him know Liara was on the line.

“She doesn’t sound happy,” Joker added, unnecessarily.

No one who knew the girls had sounded anything like happy since they were taken, after all. Garrus swallowed his initial retort, thanked Joker for the head’s up, and hit the elevator’s controls again, harder, as if repetition and frustration could make the damn thing move any faster. He ignored the faint echo of ache in his chest and tried not to imagine the way the doctor would scowl at him if she knew.

Liara started talking even before her form shimmered to life, words tumbling over each other so rapidly he had to make her start over again three times. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes—a gesture borrowed, no doubt, from Shepard—and said with forced enunciation, “What is happening over there, Garrus? What is she thinking?”

The words still didn’t make sense. Panic began to gnaw at his gut, tenacious as a varren’s jaws clenched around a fat pyjak. “You know something I don’t, T’Soni? We lost contact the second she boarded that ship.”

Liara turned away from him slightly, fingers flying over a series of haptic interfaces he couldn’t see. She said, “This broadcast has hijacked emergency signals across the _galaxy_ , Garrus, pinging from comm buoy to comm buoy, bypassing protocols. I’ve seen nothing like it since the early days of the Reaper invasion.”

Before he could start demanding answers instead of vague fear-mongering, his omni-tool pinged with Liara’s link.

“That is as close to live as I can manage across this much distance, and the turian Councilor does not want to know how many laws regarding appropriate use of data transmission I just broke sending it.”

Garrus hardly heard her. The angles and quality of the video were those of a decent security system. Black and white, but not grainy. The kind of footage he’d always appreciated when working at C-Sec, because facial recognition was easier when faces weren’t pixellated all to hell. Not cheap. Not amateur.

In this case, he almost wished for some interference.

His eyes tracked the images flashing before his eyes and though he recognized all the players—of course he did—he could make no sense of what they were doing. As he watched, a biotic explosion from Jack sent turian bodies flying into the air, all splayed limbs and awkward angles. Alenko’s powers kept them there. And Shepard—Shepard took them out, one perfect headshot at a time. Faces disappeared in unmistakable showers of greyed-out blood and bone and plate. One after another. No misses. No warning shots. No shots to disable instead of kill.

Though he could not actually hear it, he felt the report of the Widow like he was the one on the wrong end of it.

A shiver ran the length of his spine and this time the ache in his chest had very little to do with his recent brush with death. Sure, they’d had their good-natured competition over headshots, but that was back when the galaxy was swiftly going to hell and the forces shooting at them were very much aiming to kill.

Even then, he’d seen Shepard shoot out knees or shoulders when she could easily have taken the kill. He’d teased her for it, on those rare occasions he’d pulled ahead. She wasn’t big on killing when she didn’t have to. He’d never known her to be motivated by hatred or revenge.

This, though.

This was a massacre. Cold and clean and precise. Almost surgical.

The turian forces—if they could be given such an illustrious designation—wore armor predating the Reaper invasion and none carried weapons more dangerous than outdated pistols and the occasional assault rifle that had seen better days. The shots they managed to fire didn’t come close to penetrating the armor and shields of the squad raining death down on them.

Garrus knew turian expressions. These were not murderous. They were confused.

Terrified.

He knew, he _knew_ Shepard was familiar enough with the anatomy of plates and mandibles and body language to see what he was seeing. Especially since she was looking down a scope. Zoomed in. Nowhere to hide.

Another head exploded. Another turian fell.

Over it all, a desperate turian voice—was it the voice of the woman Shepard had spoken with? He couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure—subharmonics trembling with fear, whispered, “If you can hear this, if you can see this, please. Please, we need help. We are under attack. This is Matta Casarus of the trading vessel, _Enixus_. Please. We don’t have much time. We—Spirits, we think it’s Commander Shepard. She’s—oh, help us. Please. Please help us. We haven’t done anything wrong. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

Over and over and over.

Of course it was Commander Shepard.

The N7 emblem on her chest was unmistakable, after all.

Even he, who’d thought he’d seen every side of Shepard there was to see, didn’t recognize the cold, implacable expression in the eyes behind the glass of her helmet.

“Liara,” he said, “this isn’t—you know this isn’t Shepard. This isn’t her MO.”

Liara said nothing. The turian kept pleading for help. Garrus shook his head. “ _Liara._ ”

“Garrus, this looks—”

“I know how it looks. She wouldn’t—she was provoked. She had to have been provoked.”

Again Liara fell silent. He’d known her long enough to recognize the expression she wore as discomfort. Pain, even. “If this is about the children—”

“Of course it’s about the children!”

Her eyes pleaded with him. “The rest of the galaxy doesn’t know about the children, Garrus. To them, it looks as though…”

He exhaled heavily, crossing his arms over his chest because what he really wanted to do was hit something. Hard. Really hard. And he didn’t think it was smart to take his frustration out on the QEC. “As though the galaxy’s most recognizable hero has gone rogue.”

Liara nodded. “I could—I could attempt to cut the feed, but I fear it would only make the situation worse.”

“ _Shit_ ,” he snarled. “ _This_ is the trap. Not a ship swinging out of deep space, guns blazing. Nothing that would allow her to come out on top, like she always does. This. Discrediting her. Destroying her.”

“Discrediting you both.” Liara worried at her bottom lip with her teeth and shook her head. “There are two Spectres at the heart of the destruction, and you’re the only Councilor aware of their movements. Either you sent them, or they have both gone rogue. The Council will want an explanation.”

“The Council will want a scapegoat, you mean.”

“You know they are still recovering from the damage Saren did to the reputation of the Spectres. If Shepard…”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.

He bit down on his tongue. The pain was a focus. Something tangible. Something he could control.

“Who is she, Liara? Who has this kind of power? Not some two-bit trader, that’s for damned sure.”

“The _Enixus_ is registered to a Matta Casarus, whose record is impeccable. She was with the turian military for eight years, regularly earning commendations of the highest order. She was given an honorable discharge to take over her father’s trading business when he was killed by pirates in 2180. She ran supplies during the Reaper war. According to her financials, she took losses while others were profiteering.”

He sighed. “A paragon of virtue, then. Wonderful. And?”

“And the woman Shepard spoke to is not Matta Casarus. I am certain of it.”

“I hear the ‘but’ loud and clear, Liara.”

“I do not know who she is. Forgive me, Garrus. I will continue my search, but—”

“I know,” he said. “By then it’ll be too late. Shepard’ll have killed the real Matta Casarus and her whole damn crew in front of an audience of trillions and anything we say afterward’ll look like a coverup. Keep looking. I’ll—crap. I have to stop this.”

“Are you certain that’s—”

He ended the communication before Liara could finish.

He connected to the flight deck. “Joker—”

“Already on the way, boss.”

“Listening in?”

Joker snorted. “Didn’t need to. Not like Liara ever calls with good news.”

“And you’re not going to try and stop me?”

“You could break both my legs by looking at ‘em the wrong way. No, thanks. You might have to go through the doctor, though. She’s parked herself in front of the airlock and she’s looking mutinous.”

Garrus wished he could laugh. He really did. Instead, he cut the line and started composing a message to the rest of the Council he feared would be utterly ineffectual.

Had to try, though.

He had to try.


End file.
